Quotes about pleasure
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“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Feeling, Change, Childhood

“The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing., nothing but mutations.”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

Source: Roland Barthes

Art, History

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Children, Books, World

“For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Pain, Feeling

“I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Happiness, Solitude, Appearance, Dead

“The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

As quoted in Forbes (April 1948), p. 42
Variant: The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Support, Reading

“In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery.”

Karen Joy Fowler (1950) American novelist, short story writer, editor

Reading

“Sex pleasure in woman, as I have said, is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Bk. 2, Pt.. 4, Ch. 3: Sexual Initiation. p. 396
The Second Sex (1949)

Sex

“I seek new perfumes, ampler blossoms, untried pleasures.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

Source: Against Nature

“AZRAEL:

No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater… than central air.”

Kevin Smith (1970) American screenwriter, actor, film producer, public speaker and director

“What is a friend if not someone you feel close to, someone you like being with, someone you can confide in and share pleasure with.

-Jeremy Malory”

Johanna Lindsey (1952–2019) American writer

Source: A Loving Scoundrel

Feeling, Confidence

“What nobility of feeling! To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! It is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Feeling

“Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done—a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.”

Gene Bedell

Three Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way
—H. L. Mencken O

Men, Sense

“This earthly life is a battle,' said Ma. 'If it isn't one thing to contend with, it's another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder book Little Town on the Prairie

Source: Little Town on the Prairie

Life

“We two make banquets of the plainest fare
In every cup we find the thrill of pleasure…
For us life always moves with lilting measure
We two, we two, we make our world, our pleasure”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Life, World

“He that loves pleasure, must for pleasure fall.”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Evil Angel, Act V, scene iv
Source: Doctor Faustus (c. 1603)

Love

“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: The Open Door

Life, Heart

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Life, Pain, Secret, Learning

“I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what i want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

God, World, Learning, Time

“Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.”

Elena Ferrante book The Story of a New Name

Source: The Story of a New Name

Happiness

“You may think that what you’d like to recapture from your youth is your looks, your physical fitness, your simple pleasures, but what you really need is the fluidity of mind you once possessed.”

Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

Youth, Thinking

“Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Sex, Thinking

“It was a pleasure, Enna, Finn, tree rat."
"Did she just call you tree rat?”

Shannon Hale River Secrets

Source: River Secrets

Tree

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Friendship, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure.”

Eve Ensler book The Vagina Monologues

Source: The Vagina Monologues

“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
Context: Sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

Life, Fear

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”

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

Sleep

“Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body. The pleasure of the search and of adventure feeds our dreams.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Food, Dreams, Soul, Search

“Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Paris Review interview (1958)

Death

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Life, People, Nature

“I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
Context: In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Death, World

“If it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Pain, Time, Friendship, For Friend

“Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Love, Learning, Sea

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“Did I feel a physical desire for him? I did. Was I moved by a passion of my body? I was. Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I have.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Feeling, Passion

“Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 58 (May 26, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)
Source: The Idler; Poems
Context: Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World, Beauty, Fraud

“peace of mind and heart
arrives
when we accept what is:
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Pleasures of the Damned

Life, Peace, Heart

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Happiness, Nature, Selfishness

“Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Problem

“Why did you hit him? (Grace)
Because it gave me a great deal of pleasure. (Julian)
Nice. You haven’t seen me in what, two thousand years? So, instead of a friendly, brotherly hug, I get slugged. (Eros)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

“Endeavors that help me satisfy you, my goddess of desire, pleasure, and corny one-liners.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Help

“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Pain, Thinking, Parting, Indifference

“Life is short,
and pleasures few,
and holed the ship,
and drowned the crew,
But O! But O!
How very blue
the sea is!”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Abarat, Book One

Life, Sea

“If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

“I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Soul, Parting

“The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God, People, World, Hell

“I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Alone-sex didn't count. It's like the difference between thinking to yourself or having a good conversation with someone----the pleasure is in the exchange."

-Liberty Jones”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Sex, Thinking

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Life, People, Funny

“I take much pleasure in being alone
but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“He's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I can not express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being; so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable.

“I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Money