quotations about pleasure
The fact that all animals and men pursue pleasure is some indication that it is in some way the highest good.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
The more we go in the direction of Essence and away from the ego, the more pleasure we experience, because pleasure is largely dependent on how present we are to whatever we are doing. Anything can be pleasurable if we are present to it without the interference of the egoic mind. The simplest things are pleasurable when we are present to them, even things we generally don't like. Being present is one of the secrets to happiness. The more we drop out of our egoic mind and into our senses, the more pleasure our senses deliver. Pleasure actually points the way Home.
GINA LAKE
What About Now?
In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike, any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same tree.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
Each has his share; and who would more obtain,
Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain.
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
The Puritans thought they could simply repress man's sexual nature, and they reaped a whirlwind as a result. Their code of sexual morality -- which became America's -- was nothing more than a set of rules laid down by people who believed that all pleasure was suspect.
HUGH HEFNER
Playboy, January 1974
The highest pleasure is only consciousness of freedom from the deepest pain.
JAMES PARTON
Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
Everywhere there is pleasure you will find a woman in disguise.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories