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It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep.

It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep.

Approximate author period: c. 1911 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
James Joyce
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1911 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1882 to 1941; Wikidata Q6882, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6882 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 87524; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.