PLEASURE QUOTES
quotations about pleasure
There is not a little generalship and stratagem required in the managing and marshalling of our pleasures, so that each shall not mutually encroach to the destruction of all. For pleasures are very voracious, too apt to worry one another, and each, like Aaron's serpent, is prone to swallow up the rest. Thus drinking will soon destroy the power, gaming the means, and sensuality the taste, for other pleasures less seductive, but far more salubrious, and permanent as they are pure.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Man's sole duty is to produce as much pleasure as possible.
SUSAN HUBBARD
The Society of S
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
People tell researchers that getting married didn't make them any happier, and neither did having children or making a lot of money. That's because happiness for most people is defined as pleasure, and most of what makes a marriage or parenthood fulfilling is not very pleasurable. But it is good.
RON FOURNIER
Love That Boy
Pleasure to me is wonder--the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Defence Remains Open!"
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.
C. S. LEWIS
Out of the Silent Planet
Pleasure, of course, is not intrinsically bad or evil. In fact, it's an important aspect of a balanced life. But here's the problem: indulgence in pleasure has become the central focus of life, even an addiction, for far too many of us. America's entertainment and advertising industries have spent billions of dollars making pleasure into a god. And too many have opted to worship at that altar.
J. G. MAGGIO
"America's Addiction to Pleasure Harms Marriage and Family", American Thinker, April 19, 2016
Pleasure is an affectivity with pretensions to break the forms of being without recognising its unending need for being.
ELISABETH LOUISE THOMAS
Emmanuel Levinas
Why not seize pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
Of pleasures, those which occur most rarely give the most delight.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Variety is the soul of pleasure.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
Pleasure and pain seem to have been accidentally cast in the same mold.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Mrs. Cosway, October 12, 1786
The common belief of men, as represented in the prominent religions of the world, seems to be that pleasure is found almost anywhere else rather than here. The word "pleasure" is very rarely connected with doing right in this life. We say it is pleasant to do wrong; and the popular speakers and the poets have represented the flowery paths of sin, and, in contrast with those, have pictured the narrow, steep, and rugged way, the way of virtue--a way that is rough, so that the feet bleed in trying to climb; a way that is so steep that one becomes quickly weary in the struggle to go higher day by day; a way that is rocky, where no flowers bloom, and where they can hope for peace and rest only in some distant future. But the word of the proverb completely contradicts this supposition. It does not say that the end of wisdom is pleasantness: it says, "Her ways are ... pleasantness."
MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE
Light on the Cloud
If pleasure is what you want, do not suppress the desire. Seek it intelligently.
HUSTON SMITH
The Illustrated World's Religions
How is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
Pleasure's a Moth, that sleeps by day
And dances by false glare at night;
But Joy's a Butterfly, that loves
To spread its wings in Nature's light.
WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES
Joy and Pleasure
As a grim skull lies covered beneath the fairest face; so does an abyss of torment lie beneath the surface of the glittering sea of sensual pleasure and dissipation.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
So oft the finer movements of the soul,
That shun the sphere of Pleasure's gay control,
In the still shades of calm Seclusion rise,
And breathe their sweet, seraphic harmonies!
SAMUEL ROGERS
The Pleasures of Memory with Other Poems
The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics