"Tap-tap-tapping at your chamber door (only this and nothing more)."

Just one of 60 literary expressions signifying masturbation.

(Via Metafilter, where the list is immensely extended.)

"There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge."

Acting on impulse... maybe you won't, but if you will, you will have first had the impulse.