quotations about pleasure
Pleasure has a hundred thousand obvious forms, plentiful variety for the most fickle spirit. Pleasure of convalescence (how voluptuous weakness can be); pleasure of need (a dry crust of bread); pleasure of the first time and the last time; pleasure of mere looking (as the sunlight delights itself upon the tumbling fountain, as the small morning makes the metropolis unreal); pleasure of being a child (mixture of curiosity, wantonness, and the gradual stages); pleasure of having a child (O my son Absalom, graduating from high school!); pleasure of discovery and pleasure of memory, freshness and nostalgic sweetness, surprise and return. Pleasure of arising, the keenness of breakfast; pleasure of sleeping (there one is Caesar); the pleasure of the old, a stronger tobacco, to possess the time that is past; the pleasure of the young, who are not yet tired; the pleasure of marriage--the mystery of being called Mrs. for the first time; the pleasure, do not deny it, of the funeral (that, after all, the conclusion should have a certain sublimity and repose); pleasure of the grandchild (a difficult pleasure, needing so much strength to last that long and so many refusals, year after year); the pleasure of ritual, the gloves drawn on precisely; the pleasure of spontaneity, kissed by the overjoyed, the wave's foaming white head, touched at the lips.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
"Pleasure", Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge
Life ... does not need pleasure to be added to it as an appendage, but contains pleasure in itself.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
Your body can be one of the greatest sources of pleasure when you open your five senses fully and experience the physical wonder of being alive. Pleasure can come in the form of sight, like when you see a magnificent sunset, or taste, like when you eat a favorite food. It can come as a glorious musical sound or the soft touch of a lover. The only secret to learning the lesson of pleasure is to make time and space for it in your life.
CHERIE CARTER-SCOTT
If Life Is a Game
When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
There are people who cannot enjoy a pleasure unless they have first persuaded themselves that it is a duty. They are perhaps the most confirmed hedonists of all, for they are not content to enjoy without the added delight of conscious rectitude.
JOHN WILLIAM MACKAIL
"On Giving Advice"
Take too much pleasure in good things, you'll feel
The shock of adverse fortune makes you reel.
HORACE
Epistles
It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, October 16, 1938
Pleasure is the Divine seasoning in the diet of life.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Whate'er the motive, pleasure is the mark.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Complaint
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odors from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, May 26, 1759
The highway of pleasure is crossed by many toll-gates.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Pleasure is not required for happiness.
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
Selected Writings
Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
Pleasure is an affection of the soul, and each man takes pleasure in that which he is said to love--he who loves horses in horses, he who loves sight-seeing in sight-seeing, and in the same way he who loves justice in acts of justice, and generally the lover of excellence or virtue in virtuous acts or the manifestation of excellence.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
He that would have the perfection of pleasure, must be moderate in the use of it.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Aristotle thought that it was obvious that pleasure is good; the only serious question is whether pleasure is the only good.
RIC MACHUGA
Three Theological Mistakes
When the pleasure comes, leave your world behind
When the pleasure comes
You spend your whole life
You spend your whole life waiting
BLONDFIRE
"Pleasure"