quotations about pleasure
Nor is the christian's claim to pleasure less apparent. For, first, he only knows to taste the sweetness of his lawful comforts; and to enjoy those satisfactions that are common to his neighbor and himself. Who is it that makes the best of the world? The man of pleasure, who wallows in sensuality? Alas! he does not use the world, but abuses it. Fond as he seems, he but condemns his joys to death. His head is sick; his heart is faint. Is it any wonder his flesh abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat? Poor man! he pines even in the midst of plenty. For tho' his nerves should be braced with strength, and health should wanton his veins; yet is his soul but sickly and consumptive. Hence weariness of time; hence impatience of thought; hence listless inability; hence variable inconstancy, dark cares, and heaving sighs fetched from the bottom of the heart. Though all surrounding objects should wear a face of pleasure, and seem fit to inspire every joy into the heart; it is all in vain he desires to have, but he cannot obtain. He obtains, but his hopes are frustrated. Real enjoyment he is a stranger unto. For he tastes not that God is good, in his earthly delights: and finds them but empty husks:--not so he that enjoys God in his inferior enjoyments. To him the spring wears a more beauteous face, the sun shines with a more pleasing light, the tulip assumes a deeper dye, and the rose a more fragrant smell. I make no doubt but the poor beggar Lazarus in the parable, who lay at the gate of the proud and wealthy sinner, (whose name is buried in oblivion,) might taste more exquisite delight, in his scanty crumbs, and in healing tongues of the dogs, than the unpitying miser, in all his delicious fare.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Pleasure", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Pleasure is something you can easily lose the knack of, if you allow yourself to get out of practice.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
They that seldom take pleasure, seldom give pleasure.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
I have gone as far as one can go in this life, man or beast. I hunger for nothing any longer. Repetition only extinguishes pleasure.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO & CHUCK HOGAN
The Fall
The truth is that men can have several sorts of pleasure. The true pleasure is the one for which they abandon the other.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Quelques mots d'introduction", Salon de 1845, May 1845
How much pleasure will you allow yourself? Many people have an invisible quota in their minds for the amount of joy they will permit themselves to experience. They become so busy living life that they view pleasure as a luxury they simply do not have time for. Things like lovemaking or playing take a backseat to the everyday motions of living. However, your life simply will not work as well when you deny yourself pleasure. The old adage of all work and no play making you dull is quite true; you may find yourself living a rather colorless life if you do not pause every now and then to indulge your senses. Pleasure is like the oil that keeps the machine of your life running smoothly. Without it, the gears stick and you will most likely break down.
CHERIE CARTER-SCOTT
If Life Is a Game
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
Desire of pleasure binds us to the present.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
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
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
Epicurus held that pleasure is the sole good, pain the sole evil. This was a necessary consequence of his epistemological position: for the only good and evil known to the senses are pleasure and pain.
LEONARD WHIBLEY
A Companion to Greek Studies
It is a fact of human nature that we derive pleasure from watching others engage in pleasurable acts. This explains the popularity of two enterprises: pornography and cafés.
ERIC WEINER
The Geography of Bliss
Consider the nature of pleasure. It is a maligned word, meaning merely the innocence and intrinsicality of being, each thing and each state taken as final and for itself. A cup of coffee destroys your sadness.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
"Pleasure", Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge
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
Better to tread where thorns and briars wound,
And safely walk at last on heavenly ground--
Than for a while to bask in pleasure's bowers,
Fanned by her breath, and shaded 'mongst her flowers:
To feel the phantom ground beneath you slide,
And see wild desolation yawning wide
T' ingulph its victim; who, around in vain,
Despairing looks for pleasure's vanished train.
ELEANOR DICKINSON
"Pleasures of Piety", The Pleasures of Piety with Other Poems
When a man who speaks ill of pleasure is seen at times to desire it himself, he is thought to show by the fact of being attracted by it that he really considers all pleasures desirable.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
As an experience, pleasure is ... a filling up of the cup, the supplying of a need. And the deeper the draft upon vital resources, the greater the fulfilment of desire.
WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING
The Psychological Bulletin, May 15, 1908
Then love of pleasure sways each heart, and we
From that no more than from ourselves can fly.
Blameless when govern'd well. But where it errs
Extravagant, and wildly leads to ill,
Public or private, there its curbing pow'r
Cool reason must exert.
JOHN ARMSTRONG
"The Oeconomy Of Love"