quotations about pleasure
For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
Every act by which pleasure is reaped, without any result of pain, is pure gain to happiness; every act whose results of pain are less than the results of pleasure, is good, to the extent of the balance in favour of happiness.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology
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
Pleasure is the flower that fades, remembrance is the lasting perfume.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
True pleasures are paid for in advance; false pleasures afterwards, with heavy and compound interest.
JOHN LUBBOCK
Peace and Happiness
Your partner's pleasure is your pleasure.
JUDY FORD & RACHEL GREENE BALDINO
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enhancing Sexual Desire
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
Pleasure is a river running to the sea; happiness is the full, calm sea.
PETER KREEFT
Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing
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
Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
Pleasure is a hedonistic reflex, a burning impulse to abandon rational thought altogether and immerse oneself in the moment.
GENE WALLENSTEIN
The Pleasure Instinct
Pleasure believes in friends, pleasure creates communities, pleasure crumbles faces into smiles, pleasure links hand in hand, pleasure restores, pain is the most selfish thing.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
"Pleasure", Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge
The fact that all animals and men pursue pleasure is some indication that it is in some way the highest good.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man--and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness--serves as an automatic guardian of the organism's life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body.
AYN RAND
The Virtue of Selfishness
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
He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics