Quotes about pleasure (2125 quotes, page 14)

“Quite recently, to his horror, he had realized he would have to get a job. He was therefore studying to become a barrister, in the hope that he would find some pleasure in keeping as many criminals as possible at large.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Some Hope, Chapter 1

Hope , Study

“And, indeed, when I reflect on this subject I find four reasons why old age appears to be unhappy: first, that it withdraws us from active pursuits; second, that it makes the body weaker; third, that it deprives us of almost all physical pleasures; and, fourth, that it is not far removed from death.”
Etenim, cum complector animo, quattuor reperio causas, cur senectus misera videatur: unam, quod avocet a rebus gerendis; alteram, quod corpus faciat infirmius; tertiam, quod privet fere omnibus voluptatibus; quartam, quod haud procul absit a morte.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

section 15 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0039%3Asection%3D15
Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age (44 BC)

Death , Age , Appearance

“Since the unfortunate victims pay for the pleasure themselves these are HIGH CRIMES that will go UNPUNISHED because they are self-inflicted.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, HATING ONESELF

“The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Art

“How can we help loving best those who first gave us possession of ourselves? All the day long they were together: living as they did, they could not help being so; only parting at night for a few short hours to dream over the happy past day, and to meet again the next morning, the happier for their brief separation. It was a new life to him: what had often hung before him as a fairy vision — what he had longed for, but never found; and here, as if sent down from heaven, was what more than answered to his wildest dreams. Now for the first time he found himself loved for himself — slighted and neglected as he had been …. suddenly he was singled out by a fascinating woman, who made no secret of the pleasure his friendship gave her.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Love , Life , Friendship , Secret

“The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

C 38
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

People , Imagination , Drawing

“Picasso and I said things to each other during those particular years [c. 1908 -1913] that nobody would any longer know how to say, that nobody would be able to understand any.... things that would be incomprehensible, and which gave us so much pleasure.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, Cahiers d'art', 1954, p. 14 - In: 'Braque, la peinture et nous'

Understanding

“The habit which many have got into must be as far as possible corrected; those, I mean, who while they fight strenuously against the baser pleasures, yet still go on hunting for pleasure in the shape of worldly honour and positions which will gratify their love of power. They act like some domestic who longed for liberty, but instead of exerting himself to get away from slavery proceeded only to change his masters, and thought liberty consisted in that change. But all alike are slaves, even though they should not all go on being ruled by the same masters, as long as a dominion of any sort, with power to enforce it, is set over them.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 16

Love , Change , Fight

“For to me, this word Art, in its largest sense, signifies those who take pleasure in their work… Artist-carpenters who adjust with joy dovetails and mortises; artist-masons who handle lovingly their trowels; artist-cab drivers, proud of treating their horses humanely-what an ideal state of society that would be.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

Art , Sense , Horse , Joy

“A plausible interpretation is that higher income is associated with a reduced ability to enjoy the small pleasures of life. […] There is a clear contrast between the effects of income on experienced well-being and in life satisfaction. Higher income brings with it higher satisfaction, well beyond the point at which it ceases to have any positive effect on experience. […] Life satisfaction is not a flawed measure of their experienced well-being, as I thought some years ago. It is something else entirely.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 37, "Experienced well-being", page 397 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Life

“Voluptuous habits speedily bind all the powers of the soul in loathsome vassalage, and exclude every thought except such as relate to the beastly pleasures of which it is the slave. Distracted by cravings as inexorable as they are base, and in their vileness perpetually reproduced, — tantalized by the impure fountains of a diseased imagination, and oppressed with its own effeminacy, — the mind loses its vigor and its productiveness. Every faculty rapidly deteriorates and decays; memory becomes extinguished, inanity destroys resolution, and the heart is as cold and callous as a cinder extinct. It ceases to love, to sympathize, and diffuse the delicious tears that sanctify friendship's shrine. The whole countenance assumes an expression of obdurateness and repugnance. The features, marked with premature decay, proclaim that the source of gentle sentiments, pure emotions, and innocent joys, is exhausted, like a limpid fountain invaded by the scoria and flame of a volcano. All the elements of life seem to have retreated into their abused organs only to perish there. Even the organs themselves are withered, and worse than dead; their infirmities, maladies, sufferings, rush in a multitude upon the degraded victim, and overwhelm him in awful retribution.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 354.

Love , Life , Friendship , Disease

“For a moment, sitting there in above the city, I imagined life outside narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasures and attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life , Peace , Beauty , Imagination

“All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl! She had torn up my sonnet by Dowson, she had shown my telegram to everybody in the Columbia Buffet. She had made a fool of me at the beach. She suspected my virility, and her suspicion was the same as the scorn in her eyes. I watched her face and lips and thought how it would be a pleasure to strike her, send my fist with all force against her nose and lips.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Fools , Girl , Hurt

“As a Line, I say, is looked upon to be the Trace of a Point moving forward, being in some sort divisible by a Point, and may be divided by Motion one Way, viz. as to Length; so Time may be conceiv'd as the Trace of a Moment continually flowing, having some Kind of Divisibility from an Instant, and from a successive Flux, inasmuch as it can be divided some how or other. And like as the Quantity of a Line consists of but one Length following the Motion; so the Quantity of Time pursues but one Succession stretched out as it were in Length, which the Length of the Space moved over shews and determines. We therefore shall always express Time by a right Line; first, indeed, taken or laid down at Pleasure, but whose Parts will exactly answer to the proportionable Parts of Time, as its Points do to the respective Instants of Time, and will aptly serve to represent them. Thus much for Time.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

p, 125
Geometrical Lectures (1735)

Way , Time , Success , Parting

“Living in an institution, rumours of change can make life more bearable, and starting rumours can be a wonderful pleasure for those without much hope. The National Theatre was like that.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Life , Hope , Change

“"I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company — why — it will be the worse for him — that's all."
"If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry — or rather, you must avoid it altogether."”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLI : Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast; Helen and Esther

“Often have I sighed to measure
By myself a lonely pleasure,—
Sighed to think I read a book,
Only read, perhaps, by me.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To the Small Celandine.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Books , Thinking , Reading

“Though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

St. 8.
The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1785)

“Elin wondered, sitting in the sweat bath, what that had to do with passion or desire, and decided – nothing. It was justification. They had murdered the men and must prove, on the helpless bodies of the women, that they were truly stronger. Prove it to exhaustion… not even pleasure was in it for them”

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Women , Men , Passion

“A man of pleasure is a man of pains.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII, Line 793.

Pain

“Born with them—born with them : all alike! No pleasure equal to the pleasure of tormenting, to a woman.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“To-day we only smile, we laugh no more,
And e'en our very pleasures seem to bore.”

François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis (1715–1794) Catholic cardinal

On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui,
Et nos plaisirs sont voisins a l'eunui.
Réflexions sur les passions et sur les goûts (1741).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 170.

Smile

“The two men who lived there were father & son – that his name was Maretts [perhaps Maritz] … We gave him some tracts which he received with great pleasure – observing this we asked if he had a bible, he feelingly answered no, and that when he was last in the Cape about two years ago he was about purchasing a bible, but he found he had not as many dollars with him as would pay for it. Mr. Moffat immediate brought his octavo bible from which he preached and presented it to him. He hugged the bible in his arms with the apparent affection as if it has been his own child. I mentioned that it would show him the way to heaven, which he said he believed it would do. Nothing which I witnessed on the journey delighted me more than the manner in which the father and son acted towards this copy of the scriptures. After the evening worship was over they carried the treasure in triumph to their home.”

John Campbell (missionary)

Campbell's recollection in 1819 after a visit to Swellendam, quoted in Die Wêreld van Susanna Smit, 1799–1863, Schoeman (1995)

Men , Way , Home

“Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 416.

Death

“To die every day to every problem, every pleasure, and not carry over any problem at all; so the mind remains tremendously attentive, active, clear.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

3rd Public Talk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (24 May 1967)
1960s

Problem

“Perhaps not only in his attitude towards truth, but in his attitude towards himself, Montaigne was a precursor. Perhaps here again he was ahead of his own time, ahead of our time also, since none of us would have the courage to imitate him. It may be that some future century will vindicate this unseemly performance; in the meanwhile it will be of interest to examine the reasons which he gives us for it. He says, in the first place, that he found this study of himself, this registering of his moods and imaginations, extremely amusing; it was an exploration of an unknown region, full of the queerest chimeras and monsters, a new art of discovery, in which he had become by practice “the cunningest man alive.” It was profitable also, for most people enjoy their pleasures without knowing it; they glide over them, and fix and feed their minds on the miseries of life. But to observe and record one’s pleasant experiences and imaginations, to associate one’s mind with them, not to let them dully and unfeelingly escape us, was to make them not only more delightful but more lasting. As life grows shorter we should endeavour, he says, to make it deeper and more full. But he found moral profit also in this self-study; for how, he asked, can we correct our vices if we do not know them, how cure the diseases of our soul if we never observe their symptoms? The man who has not learned to know himself is not the master, but the slave of life: he is the “explorer without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the fool of the play.””

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 6
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Life , People , Truth , Disease

“Awl human happiness is conservatiff; 2 thirds ov the pleasure in sliding down hill consists in drawing the sled back. I don't serpoze thare would be enny fun in sliding down a hill 34 miles long.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Drawing , Happiness

“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Gardens
Essays (1625)

God

“On the approach of spring I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Vol. i. p. 116.
Memoirs (1796)

Spring

“We chased our pleasures here,
Dug our treasures there,
But can you still recall
The time we cried?
Break on through to the other side!”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"Break on Through (To The Other Side)" from The Doors

Time

“Youth calls for Pleasure, Pleasure calls for Love.”

Mark Akenside (1721–1770) English poet and physician

"Love, An Elegy", line 90

Love , Youth

“The most pitiless warriors against drugs have always been militant progressives. In China, the most savage attack on drug use occurred when the country was convulsed by a modern western doctrine of universal emancipation — Maoism. It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness — the United States. For the corollary of that improbable quest is a puritan war on pleasure.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: Artificial Paradises (p. 141)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

War , Wedding , Universe , Country

“I really wish the people that look sort of in anger at the 'weirdos,' at the happenings, at the psychedelic freak-out, would instead of just looking with anger, just look with nothing; with no feeling; be unbiased about it. They really don't realize that what these people are talking about is something that they really want themselves. It's something that everyone wants. You know, it's personal freedom to be able to talk and be able to say things And it's dead straight! It's a real sort of basic pleasure for everyone. But it looks weird from the outside.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

From the TV show "It's So Far Out It's Straight Down", 18.1.1967

People , Feeling , Freedom , Personality

“There is no paradise more wondrous for any soul than to be exposed to God’s Manifestation in His Day, to hear His verses and believe in them, to attain His presence, which is naught but the presence of God, to sail upon the sea of the heavenly kingdom of His good-pleasure, and to partake of the choice fruits of the paradise of His divine Oneness.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

II, 16
The Persian Bayán

God , Soul , Sea

“The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favour.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Spirit of Obligations"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Personality

“The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Sesame and Lilies, lecture I: Sesame. Of King's Treasuries, section 3 (1864-1865)

Love , Effort

“In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence: the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 22.

Life , Sleep , Freedom , Water

“Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers—they seem to jeopardize all our cherished concepts, even our self-esteem, our property rights, our powers of love, our laws and pleasures. The only relationship we seem to have with them is scorn or bewilderment, but they belong somewhere on the dark prairies of a country that is in the throes of self-discovery.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1955 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Love , Law , Cars , Country

“Muslims shared many of the deep-seated characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon elite—an intuitive resentment of culture, an amicable contempt for women, a proclivity for riding about on horses, a pleasure in discipline, and a covert homophilia.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

from … "a book about India", quoted in an article by Roger Sandall http://www.rogersandall.com/nihilism-in-the-middle-east/
Attributed

Women , Horse

“T is a little thing
To give a cup of water; yet its draught
Of cool refreshment, drained by fevered lips,
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame
More exquisite than when nectarean juice
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.”

Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795–1854) British politician

Act i. Sc. 2.
Ion (1835)

Life , Water , Joy

“Like most people of my age, I feel a longing for what is lost and cannot be restored. But if the happy pursuits and casual beauty of youth prove ephemeral, something better can endure, and endure until our last moment on earth. And that is the honor we earn and the love we give if at a moment in our lives we sacrifice for something greater than self-interest.
We cannot choose the moments. They arrive unbidden by us. We can choose to let the moments pass, and avoid the difficulties they entail. But the loss we would incur by that choice is much dearer than the tribute we once paid to vanity and pleasure.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)

Love , People , Youth , Age

“A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be with and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.”

Julie Burchill (1959) British writer

Attributed to Julie Burchill in: Austin Imoru (2008) The Woman and Her Sexuality. p. 109

Girl , Thinking

“Miss Rasmussen made a welded sculpture. Her statues were—as she would say, smiling—untouched by human hands; and they looked it. You could tell one from another, if you wanted to, but it was hard to want to. You felt, yawning: It’s ugly, but is it Art?
Miss Rasmussen also designed furniture, but people persisted in sitting down in her sculpture, and in asking “What is that named?” of her chairs. This showed how advanced her work was, and pleased her; yet when she laughed to show her pleasure, her laugh sounded thin and strained.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 6: “Art Night”, p. 228

People , Smile , Art

“The soul’s pleasure is to enter and to go forth: to enter into the profound abyss of God where it is irretrievably lost in the sight of his infinite grandeur and beauty which it contemplates continually with the eye of its understanding; and to go forth from there to the ravishing sight of our Savior, the God-Man, whom it is inspired to follow by a lively imitation both interiorly and exteriorly. p. 59”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

God , Beauty , Soul , Understanding

“O the protector of the three worlds; O the remover of the mortal pleasures of the devotees of the Hari; O the one, the resplendence of whose waters win over the brilliance of hundreds of moons; O the one who makes the Nandanavana (forest of the deities) bow down with the majesty of its great trees; O the forest of best among the descendants of Rāghu, you shine forth like the dense treasure of abstention. ॥ 7.11 ॥”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

trijagadavana hataharijananidhuvana
nijavanarucijitaśataśatavidhuvana ।
taruvaravibhavavinatasuravaravana
jayati viratighana iva raghuvaravana ॥
Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam

World , Tree , Water

“One gets the impression that people come to Los Angeles in order to divorce themselves from the past, here to live or try to live in the rootless pleasure world of an adult child.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

People , World , Angels , Past

“I've had my share of pleasure and I've tasted pain
I never thought that I would touch an angel's wing
There's a journey in my eyes
It's getting hard for me to hide
Like the ocean at the sunrise.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Heavy on My Heart
Anastacia (2004)

Pain , Angels

“I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

5 February 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

God

“Where is delight? and what are pleasures now?—
Moths that a garment fret.
The world is turned memorial, crying, "Thou
Shalt not forget!"”

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907) British writer

Mandragora, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World , Memory , Cry , Forgetting

“Haste to thie kiste, thie onlie dortoure bedde.
Cale, as the claie whiche will gre on thie hedde,
Is Charitie and Love aminge highe elves;
Knightis and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

Stanza 4.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie

Love

“The cinema may have a specific beauty of its own, but it does not permit that constant re-reading, that meditative brooding, those turning-back to passages heavily charged with meaning, which form the special pleasure of the novel-reader.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

Beauty , Reading

“The proprietor should always direct his attention to obtain from his land a gradual increase of produce, or to augment its value continually. The farmer only desires the greatest profit during the continuance of his lease, without caring for the value of the land afterwards. "Whilst the proprietor can content himself with a trifling produce during a few years, in order to attain greater and more durable profit subsequently, the tenant must, on the contrary, endeavour to obtain the greatest produce, even though its amount should be diminished during the latter years of his lease; because the proprietor who wishes to farm on the best system, finds at the same time both pleasure and profit in laying out on his property as much capital as he can spare, whilst the tenant, on the contrary, withdraws as much of his pecuniary resources as possible, to employ it in other ways, or to place it at interest. The improvement of the land constitutes the pleasure of the proprietor, while the mere occupying farmer only thinks of augmenting his income. Thus the longer the lease may be, the more do the interests of the landlord and tenant become identified; the shorter the term, the more conflicting are those interests. With a lease of 24 years, a tenant ought, at least during the first two-thirds of its duration, to follow out the views of the proprietor. But the time will come when he will act on different principles, and endeavour to extract from the land a return in proportion to his outlay at the commencement.
To this must be added, that a tenant cannot have the means of laying out so much on the land as the proprietor, even if he wished to do so. The latter must pay the rent, whilst a proprietor anxious to improve can economize something from the net produce to expend on his property. The first may be compared to a merchant who trades on borrowed money; the second to one who speculates with his own funds. The former must first provide for his rent, the latter need only think of extending his speculations.”

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

Thaer, cited in: Joseph Rogers Farmers Magazine Volume The Seventh http://books.google.com/books?id=8OnG6xwQkesC&pg=PA263, 1843, p. 263: Speaking of lease and covenants

Money , Way , Thinking , Time

“All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I

World

“He [Pericles] reduced the power of the Council of the Areopagus, a group of feeble old men who held their jobs for life and whose duty it was to declare everything null and void… [Footnote] He also revoked their right to censor the private lives of the citizens. This was nasty of Pericles, for about the only pleasure the old fellows had was catching some citizen doing what he shouldn't. After that, they had to use their imaginations.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Pericles

Life , Men , Imagination

“Diet of bankrupts… To-day, Messer Paolo is to visit me, and to-morrow there will be the cardinal; and thus they think to befool me, at their pleasure. But I, on my side, am only dallying with them. I listen to all they have to say and bide my own time.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare to Macchiavelli about his contempt for the Orsini (October, 1502), as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XV: Macchiavelli's Legation

Thinking , Time

“[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purposes of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls?”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Written in 1852, as quoted in ch. 87.
The Female Experience (1977)

Love , Soul , Girl , Idea

“Even in a pointless universe, pointless happiness and pleasures are surely preferable to pointless suffering.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 307

Suffering , Universe , Happiness

“We soon put the enemy to the rout, and I had the pleasure to see them run in worse disorder than they did at the battle of Monniouth. Our troops behaved with great spirit; and the brigade of militia, under the command of General Lovell, advanced with great resolution and in good order, and stood the fire of the enemy with great firmness. Lieutenant-Colonel Livingston, Colonel Jackson, and Colonel Henry B. Livingston, did themselves great honor in the transactions of the day; but it's not in my power to do justice to Colonel Laurens, who acted both the General and the partisan. His command of regular troops was small, but he did every thing possible to be done by their numbers. He had two most excellent officers with him, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry and Major Talbot.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Justice

“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

Tear

“many women, especially as a result of social and cultural conditioning, do not become fully aware of their dignity. Others are victims of a materialistic and hedonistic outlook which views them as mere objects of pleasure, and does not hesitate to organize the exploitation of women, even of young girls, into a despicable trade. Special concern needs to be shown for these women, particularly by other women who, thanks to their own upbringing and sensitivity, are able to help them discover their own inner worth and resources. Women need to help women, and to find support in the valuable and effective contributions which associations, movements and groups, many of them of a religious character, have proved capable of making in this regard.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Message for the XXVIII World Day of Peace, 8 December 1994
Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_08121994_xxviii-world-day-for-peace_en.html

Women , Girl , Support , Help

“Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

Pain , People , Feeling , Personality

“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter IX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

Youth , Girl , Freedom

“Those views of life which deify pleasure are less likely to yield it.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)

Life

“I am a mighty Garage,
On the corner of the Square,
And it is all my pleasure,
To provide a quick repair,
Or I can do your service,
In the blinking of an eye,
I wouldn't say it's thorough,
But it'll get you by.”

Pam Ayres (1947) English poet, songwriter and presenter of radio and television programmes

In Favour Of Pushing Your Car Over A Cliff And Buying A Bike...

“This (The launching of an invasion into Armenia) was itself hazardous; but the smallness of the number (of the army, not more than 15,000 men) might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour of the army consisting throughout of veterans. A much worse circumstance was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed. Lucullus was an able general, and - according to the aristocratic standard - an upright and benevolent man, but very far from being a favorite with his soldiers. He was unpopular, as a decided adherent of the oligarghy; unpopular, because he had vigorously checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor; unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon and many a camel to be alden with the treasures of the East for himself; unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished, stately, Hellenising, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever it was possible, to ease and pleasure. There was no trace in him of the charm which creates a personal bond between the general and the soldier.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Chpt 2. "Rule of the Sullan Restoration" Translated by W.P. Dickson
Beginning of the Armenian War
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Men , Fashion , Personality

“Everything you tell me in your last letter, which is to say that to spend more time with me they will give up going to Paris, fills me with the greatest pleasure... I find myself much better, and I hope to be back where I was before... I am happy to be better to receive my most beloved travelers. This improvement I owe to Molina.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to Javier (his only son), from Madrid, Summer of 1827; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 401 – note 15
1820s

Hope , Travel , Time , Happiness

“The Supreme God (kaḥ) (Rāma) [is resplendent] on [both] the earth (kau) and in Sāketaloka (ke); from him there is pleasure in the universe and in the sound of the peacock (kekakekākaḥ); he takes pleasure and bliss in the caw of the [Kākabhuśuṇḍi] crow (kākakākākakaḥ); from him there is pleasure for all the worlds (kakaḥ); for him the pain [of exile] is a pleasure (kākaḥ); his crow ([Kākabhuśuṇḍi]) is praiseworthy (kākaḥ); from him there is pleasure for Brahmā (kakaḥ); he calls out [to the devotees] (kākaḥ); from him there is pleasure for Kukā or Sītā (kukākaḥ); he calls out to the [Kākabhuśuṇḍi] crow (kākakaḥ); and from him there are worldly fruits and the bliss of liberation (kukaḥ). ॥ 20.92 ॥”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

kaḥ kau ke kekakekākaḥ kākakākākakaḥ kakaḥ ।
kākaḥ kākaḥ kakaḥ kākaḥ kukākaḥ kākakaḥ kukaḥ ॥
Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam

God , Pain , World , Universe

“The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.
The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. Courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", pages 39-40 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=52&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Pain , Children , Fear , Dogs

“By a commodity we shall understand any object, substance, action or service, which can afford pleasure or ward off pain.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter III, Theory of Utility, p. 61.

Pain , Understanding

“I can't pretend that I got involved with filming the natural world fifty years ago because I had some great banner to carry about conservation - not at all, I always had a huge pleasure in just watching the natural world and seeing what happens. - I made those films because it was a hugely enjoyable thing to do. But as I went on making them it became more and more apparent that the creatures that were giving me so much joy were under threat. The fun is in delighting in the animals but if you do that you owe them something so you have an obligation to speak out and to do what you can to protect them. m3s08-m4s05”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

World , Nature , Animals , Joy

“I don't want to delve into the past for archeological pleasure - though it could have been that - but because the past has a reality which conditions us deep down. Then if you bring it slowly to the surface, it's full of possibilities.”

Jannis Kounellis (1936–2017) Greek painter, sculptor and professor of arts

Quoted in Kristine Stiles & Peter Howard Selz: Theories and documents of contemporary art (1996) P.670

Reality , Past

“It is part of my duty as a decent member of my local hamlet to mow the grass in front of the church. It's a pleasant little task and mowing is a favorite activity of mine; it gives me a lot of pleasure to make the churchyard look tidy. I sometimes pause at the grave of someone or other and speculate what he might have been like when he was alive, but gravestones don't tell much.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Grass , Parting

“All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while—only so long as they are eating and drinking—but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.”

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

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Love , Pain , Drink

“Adeimantus, in what amounts to an accusation of Socrates, asserts that the philosophers appear to be either useless or vicious. Plato, as I have suggested, teaches that ultimately this is an appearance that cannot be reversed, and this insures the philosophers’ permanent marginality. They appear as useless because they are. They are neither artisans, nor statesmen, nor rhetoricians. They are idlers who contribute nothing to security or posterity. Their peculiar contemplative pleasures are not accessible to the majority of mankind, and they do not provide for the popular pleasures as do the poets.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 285.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Appearance

“The unhappiness of our life; patch up our false way of life as we will, propping it up by the aid of the sciences and arts - that life becomes feebler, sicklier, and more tormenting every year; every year the number of suicides and the avoidance of motherhood increases; every year the people of that class become feebler; every year we feel the increasing gloom of our lives. Evidently salvation is not to be found by increasing the comforts and pleasures of life, medical treatments, artificial teeth and hair, breathing exercises, massage, and so forth;…It is impossible to remedy this by any amusements, comforts, or powders - it can only be remedied by a change of life.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

Life , People , Art , Way

“Willie was sound asleep in her lap, but he sucked her little finger. South of Long Beach we stopped at a drugstore and bought a bottle with a nipple, and a bottle of milk. Willie's eyes opened when she put the nipple to his mouth. He fell to his task like a fiend. Camilla lifted her arms high, ran her fingers through her hair, and yawned with pleasure.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Love , Wisdom , Money , Children

“Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: Reform or Revolution (1899), Ch. 8

History , Time

“Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun return! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too and mystified for popular demand: perhaps we have experienced feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment—"Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure; Sighed to think I read a book Only read perhaps by me!"”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Books , World , Feeling , Thinking

“In this world, after all, I've become more or less invisible…I've become what the young are afraid of becoming, just another member of the nameless elderly, an old and broken man with nothing left to offer to this world.
My days are inconsequential, comprising simple moments and even simpler pleasures. I eat and sleep and think of Ruth; I wander the house and stare the the paintings, and in the mornings, I feed the pigeons that gather in my backyard.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Ira Levinson, Chapter 17, p. 234
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

World , Thinking , Sleep , Painting

“There is nothing more splendid than the prospect of sitting in the morning before a new ink-stone and a sheet of white paper. The smell of the white paper is like the scent of the skin of a new lover who has just paid a surprise visit out of a rainy garden. And the black ink is like lacquered hair. And the quill? Well the quill is like the instrument of pleasure whose purpose is never in doubt but whose surprising efficiency one always -- always forgets.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

, quoted in Peter Greenaway's The
The Pillow Book

Lovers , Forgetting

“Purification of the soul … consists in scorning the pleasures that arise through the senses, in not feasting the eyes on the silly exhibitions of jugglers or on the sight of bodies which gives the spur to sensual pleasure, in not permitting licentious songs to enter through the ears and drench your souls.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: On Greek Literature, p. 419

Soul , Sense

“My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures—a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one—there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best….”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 169

Sex , Drink , Sleep , Water

“History, when she adds pleasure to utility, may attract more admirers; though as long as she is possessed of that greatest of perfections, truth, she need not be anxious concerning beauty.”

Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer

How to Write History

Truth , Beauty , History , Perfection

“When waiting, travelling and not fully occupied otherwise – relax, breath, with draw and remember at attainment of pleasure that really satisfies through the wise use of leisure is an integral part of right living.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, p. 150.
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Travel , Waiting , Parting , Drawing

“It's revved for her pleasure.”

Kerry Jackson

Radio From Hell (January 25, 2006)

“…whereas the vices of Messalina were in themselves venial, being mostly a passion for sensual gratification which subordinated all things to its encompassing, Agrippina lived solely for power, frightening enough in a man but terrifying in a woman…. she would sleep with anyone, though not for physical pleasure, only for political advantage. She was cursed or blessed with a certain sexual coldness, knowing as much as a temple prostitute about the arousing of male passion and the procurement of its ecstatic release but keeping herself aloof, despite an occasional simulation of desire and the odd false orgiastic shudder and scream of fulfilment, from a process she found distressingly bestial when it was not frankly comic.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

Sleep , Passion , Falseness

“Why are […] female characters in combat roles wearing high-heels? With all the fighting, running and climbing these women have to do, dressing them in high-heels is clearly a decision rooted in sexualized aesthetic pleasure rather than believability.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

<i> Body Language & The Male Gaze (Mar 31, 2016)</i>
Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Feminist Frequency, 2013 - 2015)

Women , Decision , Fight

“And I sing and sing of awful things
The pleasure that my sadness brings.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh
Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Sadness , Singing

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

People , Fools , Way , Birth

“The pleasure of their (the Imagist poetry is not the satisfaction of discovering little by little, but of seizing at a single blow, in the fullest vitality, the image, a fusion of reality in words.”

René Taupin (1905–1981) French academic

L'Influence du symbolism francais sur la poesie Americaine(de 1910 a 1920), Champion, Paris 1929 trans William Pratt and Anne Rich AMS , New York 1985 ISBN 9780404615796

Reality