voluptuary

noun

1. One whose life is devoted to sensual appetites; a pleasure-seeker, a sensualist.

   “But Mrs. Cole, in oppoſition to this, aſſured me that the gentlemen I ſhould be preſented to, were, by their rank and taſte of things, infinitely ſuperior to the being touch'd with any glare of dreſs, or ornaments, ſuch as ſilly women rather confound, and overlay, than ſet off their beauty with; that theſe veteran voluptuaries knew better than not to hold them in the higheſt contempt, […]”

   “His features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary.”

   “St. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss Ophelia made her remark on his premises, […]”

   “Another Greek, the historian Megacleides, singles out Heracles as the supreme voluptuary.”

   “"I told you so!" he said to himself under his breath, and breathing deeply like a voluptuary he advanced towards his victim.”

adj

1. Of or relating to the seeking of sensual pleasure.

   “For as it hath beene well obſerued, that the Arts which flouriſh in times, while vertue is in growth, are Militarie: and while vertue is in State are Liberall; and while vertue is in declination, are voluptuarie; ſo I doubt, that this age of the world, is ſomewhat vpon the deſcent of the wheele; with Arts voluptuarie, I couple practiſes Iocularie; for the deceiuing of the ſences, is one of the pleaſures of the ſences.”

   “As to mental Perturbations, which render the Lives of Fools miſerable and calamitous, […] All theſe Perturbations may be comprehended under four general Heads, but admit of many Subdiviſions. Their general Diviſion is into Uneaſineſs, Fear, Luſt, and that voluptuary Elevation of a wanton Spirit which I call Joy; though the Stoics generally term it both as applicable to Soul and Body, ἡδονη.”

   “He [Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke] takes infinite pains to persuade himself that God neither exerts any providence here, nor any retribution hereafter; and therefore the ambitious man may pursue power, and the voluptuary pleasure, to any excess, or in any form, without apprehending either any present compunction, or future punishment.”

   “When a great French writer, Emil Zola, alarmed at the sterilization of his nation, wrote an eloquent and powerful book to restore the prestige of parentage, it was at once assumed in England that a work of this character, with such a title as Fecundity, was too abominable to be translated, and that any attempt to deal with the relations of the sexes from any other than the voluptuary or romantic point of view must be sternly put down.”

   “If you came this way, / Taking the route you would be likely to take / From the place you would be likely to come from, / If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges / White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.”