Quotes about pleasure
page 10

“If the mind is wearied by study, or the body worn with sickness,
It is well to lie fallow for a while, in the vacancy of sheer amusement;
But when thou prosprest in health, and thine intellect can soar untired,
To seek uninstructive pleasure is to slumber on the couch of indolence.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Recreation.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

Health, Lie, Study

“You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you. That is why I know you will join the Corps and get a great deal of pleasure out of going after the other kind of criminal who is sick, not just socially protesting. The man who can kill and enjoy it.”

Harry Harrison The Stainless Steel Rat

Inskipp the Uncatchable, recruiting Jim diGriz into the Special Corps, in "The Stainless Steel Rat" in Astounding magazine (August 1957)
The Stainless Steel Rat

“My mother, as much as I can remember from my early boyhood, and from what I heard of her after her death, was of a most lively temper, and possessed of a good and noble heart, but a little inclined to sensibility; her greatest pleasure was to see everyone happy about her. She loved me dearly and spoilt me. I adored her. Alas, I lost her when only a little boy, and never shall I efface from my memory the day of her death and funeral.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Death, Happiness, Boy

“Unlike philosophy, art does not search for islands of security from which other experiences can be expelled as fantastic or imaginary, or rejected as a world of secondary qualities or enjoyment, of pleasure or common sense. Art radicalizes the difference between the real and the merely possible in order to show through works of its own that even in the realm of possibility there is order after all. Art opposes, to use a Hegelian formulation, “the prose of the world,” but for precisely this reason it needs this contrast.”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 146 as cited in: Astonishment And Recognition http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/astonishment-and-recognition/ on unrealnature.wordpress.com, January 26, 2012.

World, Art, Search, Sense

“How to work so as to make work a pleasure.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 7 (1919), A School for Living

“But here is my mark, and there is where I'm supposed to look, and believe me, the power and the pleasure and the emotion of this moment is as constant as the speed of light. It will never be diminished, nor will my appreciation.”

Tom Hanks (1956) American actor

67th Academy Award Speech (1995)

Light, Speed

“Lead your child by the hand to the great scenes of nature; teach him on the mountain and in the valley. There he will listen better to your teaching; the liberty will give him greater force to surmount difficulties. But in these hours of liberty it should be nature that teaches rather than you. Do not allow yourself to prevail for the pleasure of success in your teaching; or to desire in the least to proceed when nature diverts him; do not take away in the least the pleasure which she offers him. Let him completely realize that it is nature that teaches, and that you, with your art, do nothing more than walk quietly at her side. When he hears a bird warble or an insect hum on a leaf, then cease your talk; the bird and the insect are teaching; your business is then to be silent.”

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer

Diary entry (1774-02-15)

Art, Mountain, Business, Nature

“It was always with great pleasure that I met the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie who had shown great patriotic energy in his resistance to Italy. Our conversations were frank and animated and I occasionally hazarded to suggest various reforms to him. I was a young student when I heard him unsuccessfully defend his country from the rostrum of the League of Nations at Geneva. The League of Nations was powerless and today the United Nations is no more effective. What has happened to Ethiopia?”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 145
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

Animals, Country

“There is an inborn tendency to be Free. Every being is struggling to be Free. No one wants bondage. No one wants misery. The very idea of disease and death is appalling to all. Still, a being thinks that it will be happy by sense-pleasures. Can these sense-pleasures make one happy? No. Any amount of sense-pleasures will not make one really happy. Sense-pleasures will bring momentary satisfaction and then make one unhappy. Then comes the question: Where does this real happiness lie? It lies in knowing the True Nature. To know your True Nature, you have to control your mind. In order to control your mind, you have to live a true life. You must be a man of good character. That is why all the Scriptures ask their followers to be good, kind, gentle, noble, charitable, truthful, etc. In fact, moral and ethical codes of good conduct are the starting points of all Religions. They start with moral and ethical codes and end with God-realization or Self-realization.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

The Essence of Life (1980), also in Minor Works II (2001), p. 131f

Life, Death, God, Happiness

“O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!”

William Collins (1721–1759) English poet, born 1721

Source: The Passions, an Ode for Music (1747), Line 95.

Wisdom, Music

“Disinterestedness is as great a puzzle and paradox as ever. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is a species of irrationality, or insanity, as regards the individual’s self; a contradiction of the most essential nature of a sentient being, which is to move to pleasure and from pain”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Alexander Bain, On the Study of Character, including an estimate of phrenology http://books.google.com/books?id=xLhcAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA292, 1861, p. 292.

Pain, Nature

“My dear little man," said the dragon solemnly, "just understand, once for all, that I can't fight and I won't fight. I've never fought in my life, and I'm not going to begin now, just to give you a Roman holiday. In old days I always let the other fellows — the earnest fellows — do all the fighting, and no doubt that's why I have the pleasure of being here now.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

The dragon to the Boy.
Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

Life, Understanding, Holiday, Fight

“I took pleasure when I could… I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky.”

Jeanne Calment (1875–1934) French supercentenarian who had the longest confirmed human life span in history

Source: Time, March 6, 1995, p. 85

“A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

"Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality" (1905), reprinted in "Essential Papers on Masochism" p.87, edited by Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly, New York University press, New York and London, (1995)
1900s

Pain, Feeling, Time, Personality

“… what is built today has as Saint Paul declared, all the earmarks of a homosexual culture. That is, a culture at war with God and God’s reality, and is therefore under the judgment of God, who, knowing the judgement of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

Death, God, War, Reality

“Have you ever fall'n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe them but in Motion, — gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely a part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and stay-sails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd?”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 74

Age, Faith, Way, Star

“First our pleasures die — and then
Our hopes, and then our fears — and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust — and we die too.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Death (Shelley, 2)

Death (1820), st. 3

Fear, Hope, Dead

“I am interested in entertaining people, in bringing pleasure, particularly laughter, to others, rather than being concerned with "expressing" myself with obscure creative impressions.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Quoted in "The man behind 'The Magic Kingdom'" in The Gazette [Colorado Springs http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20050507/ai_n14625292/print (7 May 2005)]

People, Laughter

“Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), ch. 3

Life

“I found some consolation or narcotic. Sometimes it was a woman, sometimes a good friend — yes, you too once helped me that way — at other times it was music or applause in the theater. But now these things no longer give me pleasure and that is why I drink. I could never sing without first having a couple of drinks, but now I can also not think, talk, live and feel tolerably well without first having a couple of drinks.”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 225

Music, Way, Feeling, Drink

“Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. Our interpretation of physical fitness is the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily, and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneous zest and pleasure.”

Joseph Pilates (1883–1967) German inventor of pilates

William Miller, Return to Life Through Contrology http://books.google.com/books?id=j7W-HAAACAAJ (1960)

Happiness, Nature

“Selfish men make the best lovers. They're prepared to invest in the women's pleasures so that they can collect an even bigger dividend for themselves.”

J. G. Ballard book Cocaine Nights

"Paula Hamilton"
Cocaine Nights (1996)

Women, Men, Lovers, Selfishness

“To love intelligent women is the pleasure of a pederast.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Aimer les femmes intelligentes est un plaisir de pédéraste. VI http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Fus%C3%A9es#VI Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Fusées (1867)

Love, Women, Intelligence

“…to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing…”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 1.

Feeling

“I found that it is much more pleasurable to read adventures than to live them.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 23 (p. 210)

Reading

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

Men, Hunger, Imagination, Water

“My wife has just finished reading aloud your 'Life with a Black Regiment,' and you must allow me to thank you heartily for the very great pleasure which it has in many ways given us. I always thought well of the negroes, from the little which I have seen of them; and I have been delighted to have my vague impressions confirmed, and their character and mental powers so ably discussed. When you were here I did not know of the noble position which you had filled. I had formerly read about the black regiments, but failed to connect your name with your admirable undertaking. Although we enjoyed greatly your visit to Down, my wife and myself have over and over again regretted that we did not know about the black regiment, as we should have greatly liked to have heard a little about the South from your own lips.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume III, chapter IV: "The Publication of the 'Descent of Man', page 176 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=188&itemID=F1452.3&viewtype=image; letter to Thomas Higginson (27 February 1873) The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Life, Way, Reading

“The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Pain, Nature, Light, Evil

“The question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this enquiry.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831)

Love, Happiness, Truth, Feeling

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain (1940)

God, Pain, World

“What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures! Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them — have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience — so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal — no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death — nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice? …. Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also — the soul of nature — a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design — that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life. …. It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”

Bogumil Goltz (1801–1870) German humorist and satirist

Das Menschendasein in seinen weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen (1850); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 287-286.

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Ah! why so rare does cruel Love inspire
Two tender bosoms with a mutual fire?
Say, whence, perfidious, dost thou pleasure find
To sow dissension in the human mind?”

John Hoole (1727–1803) British translator

Book II, line 1
Translations, Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1773)

Love

“We are programmed to find sex pleasurable for one simple reason—because animals who mate have offspring. Those who do not mate have none. Traits that result in successful reproduction get reinforced and passed on. Evolution is that simple.
It is therefore useless to bemoan as evil the fact that men tend toward aggression. Among our ancestors, aggression often helped males have more offspring than their competitors. “Good” and “evil” had little to do with it.
That is, until we reached consciousness, at which point, good and evil became pertinent indeed! Behaviors which might be excusable in dumb beasts can seem perverted, criminal, when performed by thinking beings. Just because a trait is “natural” does not oblige us to keep it.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 7 (pp. 105-106)
Glory Season (1993)

Men, Sex, Behavior, Nature

“Yet why should an artist's way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Why does it give us pleasure? Because, I believe, it increases our awareness of our own potentiality. Not of course our awareness of our potentiality as artists ourselves. But a way of looking at the world implies a certain relationship with the world, and every relationship implies action. The kind of actions implied vary a great deal. … A work of art can, to some extent, increase an awareness of different potentialities in different people. The important point is that a valid work of art promises in some way or another the possibility of an increase, an improvement. Nor need the word be optimistic to achieve this; indeed, its subject may be tragic. For it is not the subject that makes the promise, it is the artist's way of viewing his subject. Goya's way of looking at a massacre amounts to the contention that we ought to be able to do without massacres.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: Selected Essays of John Berger (2014), P. 18

People, World, Art, Way

“The ability… to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom… the pleasure in trying out and exploring imaginary situations. A child's play is concerned with this pleasure; and so is much of art, and much of science… [P]ure science… is a form of play, in this sense.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

Art, Sense, Freedom, Science

“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Education, Fools, Art, Knowledge

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Dreams, Hope, Way, Understanding

“Man has such a capacity for rationalization that when he finds himself affluent and able to spend as he pleases he is quick to justify his most indefensible expenditures on the ground that they give some people employment. There is probably no rich person who upon quaffing a glass of champagne does not experience a happy glow of pleasure at the thought of all the vintners, bottlers, freighters, and servants to whom his simple act has given livelihood.”

Ferdinand Lundberg America's 60 Families

America's 60 Families, p. 445 (Vanguard Press, 1938)

Happiness, People, Personality

“Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Love, Life, Men, Faith

“We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2009-05-14
Question Time
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/14/peter-hitchens-interview

People

“440. Fly the pleasure that bites to-morrow.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Flying

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice, that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence.”

John Jay Federalist Papers

1780s, The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 2 (1787)

War, People, Religion, Effort

“The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it taste better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice.”

Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) Anglo-Dutch writer and physician

Dr. Johnson in conversation, April 15, 1778, reported in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1791) p. 948.
Criticism

Books, Fish, Wealth

“He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 42
Essais (1595), Book I

Drink

“GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I may be allowed this occasion to say that, in undertaking to discharge the duties of the Chair, I relied for success rather upon your forbearance and kindly aid than upon any poor abilities of my own. That reliance, I am happy to say, has not failed me. On the contrary, the untiring efforts I feel I have made to perform the task in a becoming manner, have been met and sustained with a degree of liberality seldom equaled in any deliberative body. A striking illustration of this is seen in the fact, that notwithstanding the multiplied questions of parliamentary law and usage which have arisen, and in despite of errors into which I may have fallen, each and all the decisions of the Chair, with a single exception, (and that upon a question of minor importance,) have been generously sustained by this body. And as a further mark of respect and kindness, you have been pleased to adopt a resolution approving of my general conduct as the Presiding Officer of this body. In all this, I feel that I have been peculiarly fortunate; and for it all I beg you will accept my most sincere thanks.Allow me to congratulate you, gentlemen, upon the harmony and personal kindness which have so generally prevailed throughout this Hall. It must remain a source of unmixed pleasure to us all, that our conflicts of opinion here, however fierce they may occasionally have been, were not allowed materially to disturb our social relations; and that now, having finished our work, we part in peace. This House stands adjourned sine die.”

Linn Boyd (1800–1859) American politician

Journal Of the House of Representatives the United States: Second Session of the Thirty-Second Congress (1853-03-03)

Happiness, Peace, Law, Error

“In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied, universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing the whole character of man’s existence. By this time every human being throughout the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where American capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the aether reverberated with echoes of New York’s pleasures and the religious fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This, perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give of her very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of these crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people’s baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America herself, were irrevocably corrupted.
For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped to emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had served science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of the stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also created a new and brilliant architecture. And their genius for organization worked upon a scale that was scarcely conceivable, let alone practicable, to other peoples. In fact their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up. One who looks back across the aeons to this remote people can see their fate already woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 1, “Europe and America” (p. 33)

Fate, People, Youth, Age

“Schools everywhere have always confined themselves to making students learn techniques and write essays, while proscribing treading for pleasure. It seems to be established in perpetuity, in every part of the world, that enjoyment has no part to play in the curriculum, and that knowledge can only be the fruit of suffering.”

Daniel Pennac (1944) French author

The Rights of the Reader (2008 translation by Sarah Adams)

World, School, Knowledge, Suffering

“The Roman public's thirst for blood and pleasure in witnessing pain seems to have been unquenchable and without limit." "The caged animals were kept in dungeons below the main arena. The terrified animals in their cages were hoisted up from this pit. And not only animals, human beings too, criminals, slaves and prisoners of war. And here in this arena they were set one upon the other to provide the crowd with spectacles of the most appalling carnage. It still continues to this day in Spain.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

The First Eden (1987)

Pain, War, Animals

“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien. Letter 21: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/livreBiblioteques/Livres/Biblio(fr)/L/Lacl/Liaisonsdangereuses/lett21.htm Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

“Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

As quoted in The Journal of NIH Research (1990), 2, 30
General sources

Drink

“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal; and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.

God, Music, Thinking

“Man abhors the absence of integration. He demands integration, and will create religions, achieve heroic self-sacrifice, pursue mad ambitions, or follow the ecstasy of danger, rather than live without. If society refuses him this satisfaction in a constructive form he will seize a destructive principle to which he can devote himself and will take revenge on the society that thought his only demand was pleasure.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 188

Religion, Revenge, Madness

“Remember that the term Rational was intended to signify a discriminating attention to every several thing and freedom from negligence; and that Equanimity is the voluntary acceptance of things which are assigned to thee by the common nature; and the Magnanimity is the elevation of the intelligent part above the pleasurable or painful sensations of the flesh, and above that poor thing called fame, and death, and all such things. If then, thou maintainest thyself in the possession of these names, without desiring to be called by these names by others, thou wilt be another person and wilt enter into another life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

X, 8
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X

Life, Death, Pain, Intelligence

“At best Americans give but limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Golden Age, Time Past" (1959), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 239.

History

“Satanism to Anton LaVey was the celebration of that part of ourselves. His rituals were parodies of Catholic rituals. His philosophy was to embrace that "darkness" within ourselves, since it led to pleasure and pleasure was the real aim of life; after life there was nothing. No Heaven, no Hell, just the grave. We cease to exist.”

Sean Sellers (1969–1999) American murderer

Open Letter To Satanists

Life, Hell, Parting

“Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.”

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

May 25, 1932
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Love, World, Art, Feeling

“There, strapped like a watch on my wrist
That's finished with gold but can't tell time,
Was all of what little pleasure exists
Seductively sold and uselessly mine.”

Aaron Weiss

Nice and Blue, Pt 2.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Time

“Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in "COSI exhibit explores world of cartoons" by Jeffrey Zupanic in The Review (2 August 2007) http://www.the-review.com/news/article/2344671

People, Age, World, Animals

“The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure and pleasure my business.”

Aaron Burr (1756–1836) American Vice President and politician

Letter to Pichon, reported in Marshall Brown, Wit and Humor of Bench and Bar (1899), p. 67.

Life, Business

“He liked the vast openness of sky and prairie, and found loneliness a pleasure with so immense a domain to be alone in.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 3

Loneliness

“Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

September 1, 1777
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Life, Parting

“My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 375)

“Even though it’s dark sometimes or it’s scary for the people involved, ultimately I always make sure they’re exhilarated by it. It’s genuinely a real pleasure to take people to that place.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

People

“Stirner … holds to a joy-principle rather than to a pleasure-principle.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 143

Joy

“People like to do things. They like to do them well. People take the dangerous, hard jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can—egoize, we call it—show off?—to the weaker ones. Hey, look, little boys, see how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he is good at doing…. But really, it is the question of ends and means. After all, work is done for the work’s sake. It is the lasting pleasure of life. The private conscience knows that. And also the social conscience, the opinion of one’s neighbors. There is no other reward, on Anarres, no other law. One’s own pleasure, and the respect of one’s fellows. That is all. When that is so, then you see the opinion of the neighbors becomes a very mighty force.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 5 (p. 150)

Life, People, Law, Boy

“The pleasures of friendship, of unreserved conversation, of similarity of taste and opinions will make good amends for orange wine.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1808-06-20) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Friendship, Wine

“The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable passion of a woman, coeval with the act of breathing.”

Alain-René Lesage book Gil Blas

Book VII, ch. 7.
Gil Blas (1715-1735)

Passion

“Until now, neither the distinction between “worthy, since durable” and “vain, since transient,” nor the unbridgeable abyss separating the two, has disappeared for a moment from reflections on human happiness. Nonentity, the demeaning and humiliating insignificance of the individual bodily presence in the world by comparison with the unperturbed eternity of the world itself, has haunted philosophers (and non-philosophers, during their brief spells of falling into and staying in a philosophical mood) for more than two millennia. In the Middle Ages it was raised to the rank of the highest purpose and supreme concern of mortals, and deployed to promote spiritual values over the pleasures of the flesh—as well as to explain (and, hopefully argue away) the pain and misery of the brief earthly existence as a necessary and therefore welcome prelude to the endless bliss of the afterlife. It returned with the advent of the modern era in a new garb: that of the futility of individual interests and concerns, shown to be abominably short-lived, fleeting and vagrant when juxtaposed with the interests of “the social whole”—the nation, the state, the cause.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 31.

Pain, Happiness, Age, World

“The phrase "a literature of decadence" implies a scale of literature: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. This term, I would say, supposes something fateful and providential, like an inescapable decree; and it is completely unjust to reproach us for the fulfillment of a law that is mysterious. All I can understand of this academic saying is that it is shameful to obey this law pleasurably, and that we are guilty of rejoicing in our destiny.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Le mot littérature de décadence implique qu'il y a une échelle de littératures, une vagissante, une puérile, une adolescente, etc. Ce terme, veux-je dire, suppose quelque chose de fatal et de providentiel, comme un décret inéluctable; et il est tout à fait injuste de nous reprocher d'accomplir la loi mystérieuse. Tout ce que je puis comprendre dans la parole académique, c'est qu'il est honteux d'obéir à cette loi avec plaisir, et que nous sommes coupables de nous réjouir dans notre destinée. XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," I http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Edgar_Poe_III._Notes_nouvelles_sur_Edgar_Poe_%28L%E2%80%99Art_romantique%29#I L'art romantique (1869)

Fate, Law, Literature, Understanding

“For he who reckons it a pleasure that a man, though justly condemned, should be slain in his sight, pollutes his conscience as much as if he should become a spectator and a sharer of a homicide which is secretly committed.”
Nam qui hominem, quamuis ob merita damnatum, in conspectu suo iugulari pro uoluptate computat, conscientiam suam polluit, tam scilicet, quam si homicidii, quod fit occulte, spectator et particeps fiat.

Lactantius (250–325) Early Christian author

Book VI, Chap. XX
The Divine Institutes (c. 303–13)

“Western psychologists accuse religion of repressing the vital energy of man and rendering his life quite miserable as a result of the sense of guilt which especially obsesses the religious people and makes them imagine that all their actions are sinful and can only be expiated through abstention from enjoying the pleasures of life. Those psychologists add that Europe lived in the darkness of ignorance as long as it adhered to its religion but once it freed itself from the fetters of religion, its emotions were liberated and accordingly it achieved wonders in the field of production.”

Muhammad Qutb (1919–2014) Egyptian Islamist writer and scholar

Source: Islam: the Misunderstood Religion, Chapter 11, Islam and Sexual Repression, p. 207.

Life, People, Religion, Imagination

“Through a marvelous law of natural compensation, he who gives of himself grows, and he who turns inward and lives from small pleasures, is afraid to share them with others, and only thinks avariciously of cultivating his appetites loses his humanity and becomes loneliness itself. He carries in his breast all the dreariness of winter. He becomes in fact and appearance an insect.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Law, Nature, Thinking, Appearance

“If history has a lesson, it is that the "winner take all" attitude deprives one of the pleasures of being the heir to the best of different traditions, even while avoiding their intolerance against each other.”

László Tisza (1907–2009) Hungarian physicist

as reported by [Magdolna Hargittai, Candid science IV: conversations with famous physicists, Imperial College Press, 2004, 1860944167, 402]

History

“At this exquisite vision Tip's old comrades stared in wonder for the space of a full minute, and then every head bent low in honest admiration of the lovely Princess Ozma. The girl herself cast one look into Glinda's bright face, which glowed with pleasure and satisfaction, and then turned upon the others. Speaking the words with sweet diffidence, she said: "I hope none of you will care less for me than you did before. I'm just the same Tip, you know; only — only — "
"Only you're different!"”

L. Frank Baum book The Marvelous Land of Oz

said the Pumpkinhead; and everyone thought it was the wisest speech he had ever made.
The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)
Later Oz novels

Love, Hope, Girl, Princess

“By the time they first encounter porn, most men have internalized the sexist ideology of our culture, and porn, rather than being an aberration, actually cements and consolidates their ideas about sexuality. And it does this in a way that gives them intense sexual pleasure. This framing of sexist ideology as sexy and hot gives porn a pass to deliver messages about women that in any other form would be seen as completely unacceptable. Imagine what would happen if suddenly we saw a slew of dramas and sitcoms on television where, say, blacks or Jews were repeatedly referred to in a racist or anti-Semitic way, where they got their hair pulled, faces slapped, and choked by white men pushing foreign objects into their mouths. My guess is that there would be an outcry and the images would not be defended on the grounds that they were just fantasy but rather would be seen for what they are: depictions of cruel acts that one group is perpetrating against another group. By wrapping the violence in a sexual cloak, porn renders it invisible, and those of us who protest the violence are consequently defined as anti-sex, not anti-violence.”

Gail Dines (1958) anti-pornography campaigner

Pornland: How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gail Dines

Women, Men, Sex, Way

“Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.”

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) Irish writer

Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), "Julia and Caroline", Letter 1; Tales and Novels, vol. 13, p. 225.

Idea, Sport

“If we except the great name of Newton (and the exception is one that the great Gauss himself would have been delighted to make) it is probable that no mathematician of any age or country has ever surpassed Gauss in the combination of an abundant fertility of invention with an absolute vigorousness in demonstration, which the ancient Greeks themselves might have envied. It may be admitted, without any disparagement to the eminence of such great mathematicians as Euler and Cauchy that they were so overwhelmed with the exuberant wealth of their own creations, and so fascinated by the interest attaching to the results at which they arrived, that they did not greatly care to expend their time in arranging their ideas in a strictly logical order, or even in establishing by irrefragable proof propositions which they instinctively felt, and could almost see to be true. With Gauss the case was otherwise. It may seem paradoxical, but it is probably nevertheless true that it is precisely the effort after a logical perfection of form which has rendered the writings of Gauss open to the charge of obscurity and unnecessary difficulty. The fact is that there is neither obscurity nor difficulty in his writings, as long as we read them in the submissive spirit in which an intelligent schoolboy is made to read his Euclid. Every assertion that is made is fully proved, and the assertions succeed one another in a perfectly just analogical order… But when we have finished the perusal, we soon begin to feel that our work is but begun, that we are still standing on the threshold of the temple, and that there is a secret which lies behind the veil and is as yet concealed from us. No vestige appears of the process by which the result itself was obtained, perhaps not even a trace of the considerations which suggested the successive steps of the demonstration. Gauss says more than once that for brevity, he gives only the synthesis, and suppresses the analysis of his propositions. Pauca sed matura—few but well matured… If, on the other hand, we turn to a memoir of Euler's, there is a sort of free and luxuriant gracefulness about the whole performance, which tells of the quiet pleasure which Euler must have taken in each step of his work; but we are conscious nevertheless that we are at an immense distance from the severe grandeur of design which is characteristic of all Gauss's greater efforts.”

Henry John Stephen Smith (1826–1883) mathematician

As quoted by Alexander Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century (1916) p. 95, https://books.google.com/books?id=43SBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA95 "Henry John Stephen Smith (1826-1883) A Lecture delivered March 15, 1902"

Secret, Age, Feeling, Intelligence

“We thus derive that the essence of a man's existence in this world is solely the fulfilling of mitzvoth, the serving of God and the withstanding of trials, and that the world's pleasures should serve only the purpose of aiding and assisting him, by way of providing him with the contentment and peace of mind requisite for the freeing of his heart for the service which devolves upon him. It is indeed fitting that his every inclination be towards the Creator, may His Name be blessed, and that his every action, great or small, be motivated by no purpose other than that of drawing near to the Blessed One and breaking all the barriers (all the earthy elements and their concomitants) that stand between him and his Possessor, until he is pulled towards the Blessed One just as iron to a magnet. Anything that might possibly be a means to acquiring this closeness, he should pursue and clutch, and not let go of; and anything which might be considered a deterrent to it, he should flee as from a fire.”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 1

God, World, Peace, Way

“I have nothing and therefore nothing to lose. I have conditioned myself for every conceivable shock and strain – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I fear nothing. No threat or prospect of danger deters me; I’ve faced them all, continuously and by choice. I am willing to suffer with those who suffer, to die with those who die, and to struggle in the most extreme manner for their liberation. I’ve lived the past decade with no pleasures, no amenities, and no entertainment. I’ve conditioned myself for every extreme. This is the level of commitment that our struggle demands, and the level of commitment that I have, and those who share this commitment have my complete loyalty.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

Fear, Suffering, Past, Loyalty

“The world of their [the bourgeois’] predecessors was a backward, pre-technological world, a world with the good conscience of inequality and toil, in which labor was still a fated misfortune; but a world in which man and nature were not yet organized as things and instrumentalities. With its code of forms and manners. with the style and vocabulary of its literature and philosophy. this past culture expressed the rhythm and content of a universe in which valleys and forests, villages and inns, nobles and villains, salons and courts were a part of the experienced reality. In the verse and prose of this pre-technological culture is the rhythm of those who wander or ride in carriages. who have the time and the pleasure to think, contemplate, feel and narrate. It is an outdated and surpassed culture, and only dreams and childlike regressions can recapture it. But this culture is, in some of its decisive elements. also a post-technological one. Its most advanced images and positions seem to survive their absorption into administered comforts and stimuli; they continue to haunt the consciousness with the possibility of their rebirth in the consummation of technical progress. They are the expression of that free and conscious alienation from the established forms of life with which literature and the arts opposed these forms even where they adorned them. In contrast to the Marxian concept, which denotes man's relation to himself and to his work in capitalist society, the artistic alienation is the conscious transcendence of the alienated existence—a “higher level” or mediated alienation. The conflict with the world of progress, the negation of the order of business, the anti-bourgeois elements in bourgeois literature and art are neither due to the aesthetic lowliness of this order nor to romantic reaction—nostalgic consecration of a disappearing stage of civilization. “Romantic” is a term of condescending defamation which is easily applied to disparaging avant-garde positions, just as the term “decadent” far more often denounces the genuinely progressive traits of a dying culture than the real factors of decay. The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth. What they recall and preserve in memory pertains to the future: images of a gratification that would dissolve the society which suppresses it”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 59-60

Life, Fate, Truth, World

“Sweden is the country a good reputation in the world around us. It is something that the Queen and I often experience during our state visit. Both the country and the people are perceived very positively. Our services and products are something we should be proud of. Sweden respected as a nation and it is with pleasure and pride that I represent our country. For example, noted Nobel Prize much and it helps to show up Sweden as a nation that promotes education and science.”

Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden (1946) King of Sweden

royalcorrespondent.com http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/02/15/an-interview-with-his-majesty-king-carl-xvi-gustaf-of-sweden/

People, World, Education, Science

“people struggle, people fight
for the simple pleasures in their lives
but trouble comes from everywhere
it's a little more than you can bear”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), Break Your Heart

People, Fight

“The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. I, ch. 3
History of England (1849–1861)

Pain, Hate

“Joshua was the most dynamic lover she had ever known. Gentle and domineering; it was a lethal combination. If only he wasn't quite so ruthlessly mechanical about it. A little too much of his pleasure had come from seeing her lose all control. But then that was Joshua; unwilling to share… Joshua didn't trust people.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

musings of Ione, Lord of Ruin and autocrat of Tranquility habitat
The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Reality Dysfunction (1996)

People, Lovers

“Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 1
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)

Cheating

“It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)

World, Fashion, Business

“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.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

I-II, q. 32, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Love, Way, Motivation, Suffering

“Moderation multiplies pleasures, and increases pleasure.”

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

Freeman (1948), p. 163
Variant: Moderation increases enjoyment, and makes pleasure even greater.

“What we should desire creeps silently inside us and replaces what we really desire. … We take jobs, make compromises, and settle down for the long wait, for the arrival of the future that will bring the reward of happiness we so justly deserve for our sacrifice of the pleasures of the moment. The process is so slow we scarcely notice the substitution of plastic for flesh. We forget how the body sang when it ran free; how it rejoiced in stretching, rolling, skipping, dancing, walking, eating, loving, bounding, leaping, resting.
Gradually the body beings to change to protect itself against the intrusion of joy or sorrow. It armors itself against the threat of playfulness and spontaneity. … The working body is complete when it is thus armed against those emotions that would threaten the primacy of the work ethic and the pattern of delayed gratification upon which it rests.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), pp. 102-103

Love, Happiness, Change, Waiting

“Rejoicing and celebrating with sinners was incomprehensibly scandalous (Luke 15:1). They [the Pharisees] could only assume that he [Jesus] had become a pleasure-seeker, “a drunkard and a glutton””

Albert Nolan (1934) South African priest and activist

Luke 7:34
Source: Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 42.

“All Muhammadans are fond of women, who are their principal relaxation and almost their only pleasure.”

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

Manucci, II, 240; quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Storia do Mogor

Women

“The weak, sensual, pleasure-loving French. You know, not going to war because they’re all still in bed at two in the afternoon, with the sheets coiled about their knees, lying, there scratching themselves, smoking a Gauloise inside a Gitane, sweating Nice sancerre. Before one of them sloughs off the sheets to pad around the kitchen naked. No, not naked, naked from the waist down. To emphasise their nakedity. Picking up yesterday's croissant crumbs with their sweaty feet. Slashing yesterday's paintings.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Love, War, Lying, Painting

“There's something comforting and pleasurable about watching people win money.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On hosting the television game show Set for Life — reported in Gary Levin (January 11, 2007) "TV is riding a wave of prime-time game shows", Asbury Park Press.

Money, People