quotations about pleasure
The contrast is between necessity and pleasure. To satisfy the first is legitimate and, in fact, obligatory; to renounce the second is possible, even meritorious. The problem is that the line of demarcation between necessity and pleasure is very fine and often imperceptible; when one eats or drinks, the two go together, inextricably bound. It is precisely from this observation that a culture of deep suspicion developed in Christian tradition toward the daily gestures of eating and drinking, so innocuous at first glance.
MASSIMO MONTANARI & BETH ARCHER BROMBERT
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table
Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Past pleasures are of as little comfort to a man as the money in his neighbor's pocket.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
As to the lawful pleasures of the mind, the heart, or the senses, indulge in them with gratitude and moderation, drawing up sometimes in order to punish yourself, without waiting to be forced to do so by necessity.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Letters to Young Men
Pleasure is not shameful, not even neutral; it is sacred. The act of consciously receiving pleasure connects our awareness to the very pulse of life through the senses, and in doing so, honors the divine.
JENA LA FLAMME
Pleasurable Weight Loss
Oh righteous doom, that they who make
Pleasure their only end,
Ordering the whole life for its sake,
Miss that whereto they tend.
While they who bid stern duty lead,
Content to follow, they,
Of duty only taking heed,
Find pleasure by the way.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH
"Retribution"
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
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"
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, 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
Pleasure is life, and pain is death.
MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE
Light on the Cloud
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
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
Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
Pleasure is the flower that fades.
STANISLAS JEAN DE MARQUIS BOUFFLERS
attributed, Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul
Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
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
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