Quotes about pleasure

A collection of quotes on the topic of pleasure, life, doing, other.

Best quotes about pleasure

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Happiness is not pleasure — it is victory.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

See You at the Top (2000)

“Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: Life's Little Instruction Book

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

March 11, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)

“Pleasure, a most mighty lure to evil.”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 69d (W. R. M. Lamb's translation); also rendered: pleasure, "the bait of sin" (W.A. Falconer's translation).
Timaeus

Julius Evola quote: “Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.”

Quotes about pleasure

“Contrary to what some might believe, writing does not generate enjoyment or pleasure in itself, quite the opposite; And yet, I feel the need to write fiction as if I have a feeling that I will find something in the middle of my narrative journey, no matter how painful it may be.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Klairet Levy, R. Interview to José Baroja. http://letras.mysite.com/jbar050923.html

Pain, Feeling

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

love, Love, Life, People

“What's my guilty pleasure? The thing is, I never feel guilty about pleasures.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Feeling

“Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

Imagination, Time, Reading

“At this stage, some people might advise me to focus on pleasure and avoid any kind of pain—But where can we hide from pain when it finds us unprepared?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Pain, People

“Seven Steps to Success
1) Make a commitment to grow daily.
2) Value the process more than events.
3) Don't wait for inspiration.
4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity.
5) Dream big.
6) Plan your priorities.
7) Give up to go up.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Dreams, Waiting, Success

“I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.”

Ptolemy book Almagest

In some of the manuscripts, the books begins with this epigram (Owen Gingerich, The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, American Institute of Physics, 1993, p. 55).
Almagest

Nature

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Personality, Sense

“Finally, the benefits of knowing thyself are —You won’t be clouded by the love of life, flatterers can’t arouse your mind, good/bad will appear to be the same before your eyes, pleasure and pain will lose their meanings, the sense of sins and death will vanish away and you will end up having the sense of immortality.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Pain, Appearance, Death, Sense

“By feeling the sunshine, or pleasure, we end up forgetting all of our miseries, or pains in life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Pain, Forgetting, Life, Feeling

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”

Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) writer and poet from England

Reading

“Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done.”

Julius Evola (1898–1974) Italian philosopher and esotericist

Source: Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul

Pain, Motivation

“It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“But pleasures are like poppies spread—
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river—
A moment white—then melts forever.”

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter

Source: Tam o' Shanter (1790), Line 59
Source: Tam O'Shanter

“Angels, living light most glorious!
Beneath the Godhead in burning desire
in the darkness and mystery of creation
you look on the eye of your God
never taking your fill:
What glorious pleasures take shape within you!”

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) Medieval saint, prophetise, mystic and Doctor of Church

"O gloriosissimi"

God, Angels, Light

“The boys in my grade talked about sex a lot. Some of them even told me that they had sex with their girlfriends. This was the most devastating and traumatizing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Boys having sex at my age of Fourteen? I couldn’t fathom it. How is it that they were able to have such intimate and pleasurable experiences with girls while I could only fantasize about it? I frequently started asking myself. This was an all-boys school… How in the hell were those boys even able to meet girls to have sex with? I wondered. I hoped they were lying. I hoped against all hope. […] and one of my obnoxious classmates named Jesse was bragging about having sex with his girlfriend. I defiantly told him that I didn’t believe him, so he played a voice recording of what sounded like him and his girlfriend having sex. I could hear a girl saying his name over and over again while she panted franticly. He grinned at me smugly. I felt so inferior to him, and I hated him.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 14

Life, Hate, Age, School

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

“The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
Quoted by Stobaeus

Life, Death, People, Learning

“Hindustan is a country which has few pleasures to recommend it…. Indians have no idea of the charms of friendly society, of frankly mixing together, or of familiar intercourse…. They have no horses, no good grapes, or musk melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food or bread in their bazaars, no bath or colleges, no candles, no torches, not a candle stick”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

First Mughal emperor Babur wrote in his autobiography Tuzk-e-Babri

Food, Idea, Water, Horse

“Pleasure limits the scope of human possiblity-the pleasure principle is a principle of homeostasis. Desire, on the other hand, finds its boundary, its strict relation, its limit, and it is in the relation to this limit that it is sustained as such, crossing the threshold imposed by the pleasure principle.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Of The Subject of Certainty p. 31
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

“I have lived such an unnatural life, devoid of love, sex, and pleasure.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Perspective on incelness

Love, Life, Sex

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Letter to Ottoline Morrell (January 1922)

Books, Reading

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

“For nature forms our spirits to receive
Each bent that outward circumstance can give:
She kindles pleasure, bids resentment glow,
Or bows the soul to earth in hopeless woe.”
Format enim Natura prius nos intus ad omnem Fortunarum habitum, juvat, aut impellit ad iram, Aut ad humum moerore gravi deducit, et angit.

Horace Ars Poetica

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 108 (tr. Conington)

Soul, Nature

“There is an influence which is getting strong and stronger day by day, which shows itself more and more in all departments of human activity, and influence most fruitful and beneficial—the influence of the artist. It was a happy day for the mass of humanity when the artist felt the desire of becoming a physician, an electrician, an engineer or mechanician or—whatnot—a mathematician or a financier; for it was he who wrought all these wonders and grandeur we are witnessing. It was he who abolished that small, pedantic, narrow-grooved school teaching which made of an aspiring student a galley-slave, and he who allowed freedom in the choice of subject of study according to one's pleasure and inclination, and so facilitated development.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"Roentgen Rays or Streams", Electrical Review (12 Aug 1896). Reprinted in The Nikola Tesla Treasury (2007), 307. By Nikola Tesla

School, Study, Freedom, Strong

“The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Hope, Imagination, Future

“O my son, thy lips still smell of milk, and thy heart should go out to pleasure. But the days are grave, and Iran looketh unto thee in its danger.”

Ferdowsi book Shahnameh

Translation of Helen Zimmern http://classics.mit.edu/Ferdowsi/kings.5.rustem.html <br class="br">Shahnameh

Heart

“If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure.”

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire

From a speech regarding the morality laws of Lex Julia. Livy's account states the speech was plagiarized by Augustus from another by Q. Metellus (Periochae 59.9). A fragment of this original speech (quoted) is preserved by A. Gellius (Noctes Atticae 1.6).
Original: (la) Si sine uxore pati possemus, Quirites, omnes ea molestia careremus; set quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode, nec sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuae potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum est.
Source: [http://www.unrv.com/government/julianmarri

Way, Nature

“I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie, p. 26

Life, People, Time, Help

“Whoever did not live in the years neighboring 1789 does not know what the pleasure of living means.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) French diplomat

Qui n'a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est le plaisir de vivre.
Reported in Memoirs pour Servir a l'histoire de nous Temps by François Guizot, Volume I, p. 6.

“Alms in secret extinguish the wrath of the Lord means you are so immersed in sincerity and in preserving that sincerity that you have no pleasure in giving alms.”

Shams-i Tabrizi (1185–1248) 1185-1248, spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi.

Me & Rumi (2004)

Secret, Sincerity

“A good, skillful worker is one who does not consider the reward, but enjoys his work. If, for example, a skillful tailor knows that the clothing fits its owner at every point, it gives him pleasure, more than the money he receives.”

Baruch Ashlag (1907–1991) Polish rabbi

Selected Articles

Money, Clothes

“And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 3
Context: For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that. You are bored, but you are not afraid. You think vaguely, 'I shall be starving in a day or two--shocking, isn't it?' And then the mind wanders to other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some extent, provide its own anodyne. And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

Dogs, Feeling

“The rich prided themselves upon their superiority to those who were less favored; but they had obtained their riches by violation of the law of God. They had neglected to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to deal justly, and to love mercy. They had sought to exalt themselves and to obtain the homage of their fellow creatures. ... They have sold their souls for earthly riches and enjoyments, and have not sought to become rich toward God. The result is, their lives are a failure; their pleasures are now turned to gall, their treasures to corruption.”

Ellen G. White book The Great Controversy

The Great Controversy (1911 edition), p. 248

Soul, Clothes, God, Law

“I love to see a happy child.
They find magic in everything.
This gives me pleasure and hope for the future.
A well-adjusted individual is a prodigious asset to the world!”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Future, Happiness, Hope, World

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: "Why I Write" http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/write.html, Gangrel (Summer 1946) <br class="br">Context: Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.<br>It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness.

Love, Feeling

“As a matter of fact," the other voice went on, "if you do tie her up from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to like it, that’s no good either. You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.”

Pauline Réage book Story of O

Source: Story of O

Tear, Time, Past

“The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Pain

“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Source: Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust

Life

“So sweet and delicious do I become,
when I am in bed with a man
who, I sense, loves and enjoys me,
that the pleasure I bring excels all delight,
so the knot of love, however tight
it seemed before, is tied tighter still.”

Veronica Franco (1546–1591) Italian poet and courtesan

Source: Poems and Selected Letters

Love, Sense

“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 30
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

God, Thinking, Personality

“Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

People, Sadness, Suicide

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1798-12-24) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters
Source: Jane Austen's Letters

People, Funny

“Sex is more than an act of pleasure, it’s the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it’s almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you’re a part of them.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Sex, Feeling, Parting, Personality

“I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into a new tongue.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Pain, Soul, Hell

“As the thing more perfect is,
The more it feels of pleasure and of pain.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto VI, lines 107–108 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Pain, Feeling, Perfection

“There are three classes of friendship and enmity, since men are so disposed to one another either by preference or by need or through pleasure and pain.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

Book IV, sec. 7
Tetrabiblos

Men, Pain, Friendship

“The brave man is not only he who overcomes the enemy, but he who is stronger than pleasures. Some men are masters of cities, but are enslaved to women.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Freeman (1948), p. 163
Variant: The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures. There are some men who are masters of cities but slaves to women.

Women, Men

“Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XX, lines 73–77 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Singing

“There is no doubt a difference in the right hon. gentleman's demeanour as leader of the Opposition and as Minister of the Crown. But that's the old story; you must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession. 'Tis very true that the right hon. gentleman's conduct is different. I remember him making his protection speeches. They were the best speeches I ever heard. It was a great thing to hear the right hon. gentleman say: "I would rather be the leader of the gentlemen of England than possess the confidence of Sovereigns". That was a grand thing. We don't hear much of "the gentlemen of England" now. But what of that? They have the pleasures of memory—the charms of reminiscence. They were his first love, and, though he may not kneel to them now as in the hour of passion, still they can recall the past; and nothing is more useless or unwise than these scenes of crimination and reproach, for we know that in all these cases, when the beloved object has ceased to charm, it is in vain to appeal to the feelings. You know that this is true. Every man almost has gone through it. My hon. gentleman does what he can to keep them quiet; he sometimes takes refuge in arrogant silence, and sometimes he treats them with haughty frigidity; and if they knew anything of human nature they would take the hint and shut their mouths. But they won't. And what then happens? What happens under all such circumstances? The right hon. gentleman, being compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner: "We can have no whining here". And that, sir, is exactly the case of the great agricultural interest—that beauty which everybody wooed and one deluded. There is a fatality in such charms, and we now seem to approach the catastrophe of her career. Protection appears to be in about the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. The country will draw its moral. For my part, if we are to have free trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by the hon. member for Stockport than by one who through skilful Parliamentary manoeuvres has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, I care not what may be the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament you have betrayed. For me there remains this at least—the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/mar/17/agricultural-interest in the House of Commons (17 March 1845). <br class="br">1840s

Love, People, Beauty, Feeling

“The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Scars on the Soul (1972)

Love, Life, Way, Understanding

“All pleasure is a vice, for seeking pleasure is what everybody does in life, and the only dark vice is doing what everybody does.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 265
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Todo o prazer é um vício, porque buscar o prazer é o que todos fazem na vida, e o único vício negro é fazer o que toda a gente faz.

Life

“I have no sense of pleasure or pain, and I stay as I have always been. Sometimes He draws me outside, and sometimes He takes me inside and I am completely withdrawn. I am nobody, all of my actions are done by him and not by me.”

Sri Anandamoyi Ma (1896–1982) Hindu saint

Gopinath Kaviraj, Sri Sri Ma Anandamayi: Upadesa O Prasnottara, p. 1
By followers

Pain, Sense, Drawing

“Let a man be of good cheer about his soul, who has cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to him, and rather hurtful in their effects, and has followed after the pleasures of knowledge in this life; who has adorned the soul in her own proper jewels, which are temperance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth—in these arrayed she is ready to go on her journey to the world below, when her time comes. You, Simmias and Cebes, and all other men, will depart at some time or other. Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Men, Fate, Truth

“In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Phaedrus
Plato, Phaedrus

“Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human

Love, Pain, Friendship, People

“To secure the greatest amount of pleasure with the least possible outlay should be the aim of all economic effort… when everyone does this the natural order, instead of being endangered, will be all the better assured.”

François Quesnay (1694–1774) French economist

Questney, cited in: J. D. Vassie, ‎Paul Chadburn (1935). Economics, Modern Business, p. 137.

Nature, Effort

“Chandiri I stormed in 934 A. H. (1528 A. D.) and, by God's pleasure, took it in a few hours; in it was Rana Sanga's great and trusted man Midni Rao, we made general massacre of the Pagans in it and, as will be narrated, converted what for many years had been a mansion of hostility, into a mansion of Islam.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Baburnama https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n551/mode/2up, translated by Annette Beveridge

God, Hostility

“Few men are controlled by reason, and few are pleased by a right purpose. The mob, rather, is led to what was plainly invented for oblivion of its cares. For it supposes that whatever serves its pleasure must also be linked to the happiness of the age. Therefore, let us grant the expenses, and not be forever giving from rational considerations. Sometimes it is useful to play the fool, and so control the joys the people long for.”

Cassiodorus Variae

Bk. 3, no. 51; pp. 70-71.
Variae

Men, People, Age, Fools

“No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 173.

Life, Death, Feeling, Chance

“Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from the brutality of male history. The private world of sexual dominance that men demand as their right and their freedom is the mirror image of the public world of sadism and atrocity that men consistently and self-righteously deplore. It is in the male experience of pleasure that one finds the meaning of male history.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

p 69.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men, World, Imagination, History

“These two experiences taught me several lessons. Lesson that I have never forgotten. I did not want to learn these lessons but I found out that it isn’t what one wants in this world that one gets. Force and might makes right. Perhaps things shouldn’t be that way but thats the way they are. I learned to look with suspicion and hatred on everybody. As the years went on that idea persisted in my mind above all others. I figured that if I was strong enough and clever enough to impose my will on others, I was right. I still believe that to this day. Another lesson I learned at that time was that there were a lot of very nice things in this world. Among them were Whisky and Sodomy. But it depended on who and how they were used. I have used plenty of both since then but I have recieved more pleasure of them since; than I did those first times. Those were the days when I was learning the lessons that life teaches us all and they made me what I am today.”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, p. 174, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

Life, World, Way, Idea

“All those things [meaning works of art] have given me the greatest satisfaction and contentment because they are not only for the honor of God but are likewise for my own remembrance. For fifty years, I have done nothing else but earn money and spend money; and it became clear that spending money gives me greater pleasure than earning it.”

Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464) First ruler of the Medici political dynasty

Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici by Salviati; as cited in Taylor, F.H. (1948). The taste of angels, a history of art collecting from Rameses to Napoleon. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 65–66.

Money, God, Art

“For your sake, I gave up all pleasures,
Now why are you making me long for you?
You create the pang of separation inside the bosom
So that you can come and quench it?
O! Lord! Now I will not leave you
Smilingly, call me soon!
Meera is your servant in birth after birth
Unite me with you in every limb.”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

V.K.Subramanian in Mystic Songs of Meera http://books.google.co.in/books?id=dP-oekmHwWQC&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 21

Birth

“Necessity brings him here, not pleasure.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XII, line 87 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1
Context: Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.

“No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.”

Epicurus (-341–-269 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

8
Variant translation: No pleasure is itself a bad thing, but the things that produce some kinds of pleasure, bring along with them unpleasantness that is much greater than the pleasure itself.
Sovereign Maxims

Evil, Time

“You are living for the sake of love and your life is not free from wanting more love or pleasure to yourself.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Love

“He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

Knowledge

“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pain, Animals

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Learning, Reading

“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Heartbreaking, Sad, love, Cute

“Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, Joy, Dependency

“A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.”

Jean Racine (1639–1699) French dramatist

Sad, Death, Sadness

“Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11. Quoted in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (opening epigram).
Variant: Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.
Source: Twilight of the Idols

Men, Truth, Peace, Way