“The third principle [way doing good to another may give pleasure] is the motive: for instance when a man is moved by one whom he loves, to do good to someone: for whatever we do or suffer for a friend is pleasant, because love is the principal cause of pleasure.”
I-II, q. 32, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Thomas Aquinas 104
Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catho… 1225–1274Related quotes

“I believe… that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”
Letter to John Adams (1816)
1810s

“Gimme one good reason not to do it(because we love you), so do it.”
King's Crossing.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

La honte que cause l’amour est comme sa douleur: on ne l’éprouve qu’une fois. On peut encore la feindre après; mais on ne la sent plus. Cependant le plaisir reste, et c’est bien quelque chose.
Letter 105: La Marquise de Merteuil to Cécile Volanges. Trans. Richard Aldington (1924). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_105
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis


“Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.”
Source: Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul

Letter to the Lenape Nation (18 October 1681); as published in William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania 1680 - 1684: A Documentary History, (1983) edited by Jean R. Soderlund, University of Pennsylvania Press
Context: There is one great God and power that has made the world and all things therein, to whom you and I and all people owe their being and well-being, and to whom you and I must one day give an account for all that we do in this world. This great God has written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one another, and not to do harm and mischief one unto another. Now this great God has been pleased to make me concerned in your parts of the world, and the king of the country where I live has given unto me a great province therein, but I desire to enjoy it with your friends, else what would the great God say to us, who has made us not to devour and destroy one another, but live soberly and kindly together in the world.
Now I would have you well observe, that I am very sensible of the unkindness and injustice that has been too much exercised towards you by the people of these parts of the world, who have sought themselves, and to make great advantages by you, rather than be examples of justice and goodness unto you; which I hear has been matter of trouble to you and caused great grudgings and animosities, sometimes to the shedding of blood, which has made the great god angry. But I am not such man as is well known in my own country. I have great love and regard toward you, and I desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind just, and peaceable life; and the people I send are of the same mind, and shall in all things behave themselves accordingly.

“Suffer love! A good ephitet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.”
Source: Much Ado About Nothing