quotations about pleasure
They that seldom take pleasure, seldom give pleasure.
FULKE GREVILLE
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Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Pleasure is the physical manifestation of joy.
CHERIE CARTER-SCOTT
If Life Is a Game
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
JOHN KEATS
"Fancy"
But pleasures are like poppies spread--
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river--
A moment white -- then melts for ever.
ROBERT BURNS
Tam o' Shanter
Men seek but one thing in life--their pleasure.... You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Of Human Bondage
Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Freedom from the Known
The excess of delight palls our appetites rather than pleases.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, July 18, 1713
For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Ah, many a one has started forth with hope and purpose high;
Has fought throughout a weary life, and passed all pleasure by;
Has burst all flowery chains by which men aye have been enthralled;
Has been stone-deaf to voices sweet, that softly, sadly called;
Has scorned the flashing goblet with the bubbles on its brim;
Has turned his back on jewelled hands that madly beckoned him;
Has, in a word, condemned himself to follow out his plan
By stern and lonely labor--and has died, a conquered man!
GEORGE ARNOLD
"Wool-Gathering"
The path to pleasure is frequently not pretty. One woman's misogynist may be the image of another woman's desire. And men have been known to hunger for those who hate them, too. There is a measure of spiritual authenticity in sleaze.
TRISTAN FOX
Vanity Fair, November 1984
The contrast is between necessity and pleasure. To satisfy the first is legitimate and, in fact, obligatory; to renounce the second is possible, even meritorious. The problem is that the line of demarcation between necessity and pleasure is very fine and often imperceptible; when one eats or drinks, the two go together, inextricably bound. It is precisely from this observation that a culture of deep suspicion developed in Christian tradition toward the daily gestures of eating and drinking, so innocuous at first glance.
MASSIMO MONTANARI & BETH ARCHER BROMBERT
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table
Passing pleasures do but cloy,
And ape the consciousness of joy:
The wine, the women, and the song,
That tempt us here by night,
Are happy things, though not for long,
To wing oblivious flight
Above the dull, resenting pain,
That, waking, seizes on the brain,
And gives the moody fibre food
To mope, or captiously to brood,
With swollen eyes and torpid legs,
O'er foul and discontented dregs.
Ah! the quiet that did pall
Before I drank indulgence blind
Becomes the panacea in all
I seek, yet, seeking, cannot find.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Passing Pleasures", Imogen and Other Poems
Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure, can also agonize with pain.
HORACE MANN
A Few Thoughts for a Young Man
We ought to aim at such pleasures as follow labor, not at those which precede it.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Everybody's looking for a reason to live
If you're looking for a reason
I've a reason to give
Pleasure, little treasure
DEPECHE MODE
"Pleasure, Little Treasure"
As to the lawful pleasures of the mind, the heart, or the senses, indulge in them with gratitude and moderation, drawing up sometimes in order to punish yourself, without waiting to be forced to do so by necessity.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Letters to Young Men
Pleasure is the sun of the morning, the cloud of the meridian, and the storm of the evening.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
PLATO
Protagoras
Pleasure is not an epiphenomenon, a lucky happenstance of neurons being in the right place and firing at the right time. It has evolved to serve a very specific and adaptive set of functions from our distant past. The genes that encourage the expression and feeling of pleasure are success stories of natural selection--they are still around. Therefore, in our quest to understand the psychological, biological, and cultural foundations of pleasure in the modern world, we must consider what problems pleasure solved for our ancestors. If the pleasures did not provide a functional solution to some selection factors faced by our earlier brethren, the genes that shape their expression and feeling would be long gone, into the dustbin of ecological time like most others.
GENE WALLENSTEIN
The Pleasure Instinct