quotations about pleasure
Past pleasures are of as little comfort to a man as the money in his neighbor's pocket.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
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
We ought to aim at such pleasures as follow labor, not at those which precede it.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The excess of delight palls our appetites rather than pleases.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name--
I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low:
Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Complaint
When happiness was a matter of pleasure, and pleasure a matter of taste, one could be happy simply by rolling in filth.
DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Happiness: A History
Oh my meters running so I got to go now
It's the pleasure principle oh oh ohh
It's the principle of pleasure, ohh
It's the pleasure principle oh oh
JANET JACKSON
"The Pleasure Principle"
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Pleasure is life, and pain is death.
MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE
Light on the Cloud
Pleasure is the flower that fades, remembrance is the lasting perfume.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
AYN RAND
The Virtue of Selfishness
So what do we know about the pursuit of pleasure compared to the pursuit of meaningful activities that also foster engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment? Can the seeking of pleasure alone lead to psychological well-being? Research shows that engagement and meaning are significantly related to well-being, whereas pleasure is negatively related to objective well-being, including things like education, achievement, and the absence of mental disorders. Engagement and meaning contribute more to well-being than pleasure, because they help people build resources that are valuable. Seeking pleasure provides a short-term reward but does not provide further skill or resource development.
JENNIFER W. SHEWMAKER
Sexualized Media Messages and Our Children
He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtue's sake.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
The pleasure of any incident, whether it is of a sunset, or sexual, or any sensory pleasure, is recorded and thought over. So thought as pleasure plays a tremendous part in our life. Something happened yesterday which was a most lovely thing, a most happy event, it is recorded; thought comes upon it, chews it and keeps on thinking about it and wants it repeated tomorrow, whether it be sexual or otherwise. So thought gives vitality to an incident that is over.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
The Awakening of Intelligence
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
Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong