Absalom, Absalom!
And if you haven't got honor and pride, then nothing matters. Only there is something in you that doesn't care about honor and pride yet that lives, that even walks backward for a whole year just to live; that probably even when this is over and there is not even defeat left, will still decline to sit still in the sun and die, but will be back out in the woods, moving and seeking where just will and endurance could not move it, grubbing for roots and such--the old mindless sentient undreaming meat that doesn't even know any difference between despair and victory, Henry.
(bio)
slut, n. (OED)
2. …
b. In playful use, or without serious imputation of bad qualities.
1664 S. Pepys Diary 21 Feb. (1971) V. 55 Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut and pleases us mightily.
1678 J. Bunyan Pilgrim’s Progress 112 As the Mother cries out against her Child in her lap, when she calleth it Slut and naughty Girl, and then falls to hugging and kissing it.
1710–1 Swift Lett. (1767) III. 79 Ah! you’re a wheedling slut, you be so.
1741 S. Richardson Pamela III. xxx. 207 Well did the dear Slut describe the Passion I struggled with.
1824 W. S. Landor Imaginary Conversat. II. xv. 278 [Henry VIII] Nanny, thou art a sweet slut.
1884 C. G. Gordon Jrnls. Kartoum (1885) 115 Why the black sluts would stone me if they thought I meditated such action.
transf.
1862 Thackeray Philip xiii, You see I gave my cousin this dog,‥and the little slut remembers me.
