Pleasure Quotes

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A litterateur is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer.... He is just like an ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper reporter, because of his fastidiousness or from a wish to give pleasure to his readers, were to describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railroad contractors.

The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.

Where pleasure prevails, all the greatest virtues will lose their power.

You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humour while roaring with laughter.

Long-expected one-and-twenty,
Ling'ring year, at length is flown;
Pride and pleasure, pomp and plenty,
Great [Sir John], are now your own.

Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.

I have no doubt that the Romans planned the time-table of their days far better than we do. They rose before the sun at all seasons. Except in wartime we never see the dawn. Sometimes we see sunset. The message of sunset is sadness; the message of dawn is hope. The rest and the spell of sleep in the middle of the day refresh the human frame far more than a long night. We were not made by Nature to work, or even play, from eight o'clock in the morning till midnight. We throw a strain upon our system which is unfair and improvident. For every purpose of business or pleasure, mental or physical, we ought to break our days and our marches into two.

Winston Churchill

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features.

Henry David Thoreau

Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling, speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be; I often mentally cry out 3 to 1 Tertiary against primitive; but the latter have hitherto won all the bets.

Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty.

Benjamin Franklin

Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i. e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.

All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.

Michel de Montaigne

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

Charles Dickens

I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and — and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another — a sequel — feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.

There is pleasure in meeting the eyes of those to whom we have done good.

Jean de La Bruyère

Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.

To lift and penetrate and tear apart the soil is a labour — a pleasure — always accompanied by an exultation that no unprofitable exercise can ever provide.

Work is often the father of pleasure; I pity the man overwhelmed with the weight of his own leisure.

We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In educating the young we use pleasure and pain as rudders to steer their course.