The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]

“The Blushful Mystery: Art and Sex,” Prejudices: First Series (1919)