Quotes about pleasure
page 8

“It is widely supposed that the naked human body is in itself an object upon which the eye dwells with pleasure and which we are glad to see depicted. But anyone who has frequented art schools and seen the shapeless, pitiful model that the students are industriously drawing will know this is an illusion. The body is not one of those objects which can be made into art by direct transcription — like a tiger or a snowy landscape. Often in looking at the natural and animal world we joyfully identify ourselves with what we see and from this happy union create a work of art. This is the process students of aesthetics call empathy, and it is at the opposite pole of creative activity to the state of mind that has produced the nude. A mass of naked figures does not move us to empathy, but to disillusion and dismay.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. 1: The Naked and the Nude

Happiness, World, School, Art

“What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Love, Life, Pain, War

“In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

"The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p 34
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

Men, Music, History, Study

“The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 5, "Sexual Morality"
Mere Christianity (1952)

People, Hell, Sport, Animals

“I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 131

People, Way, Idea

“The acts of Him Whom God shall make manifest are like unto the sun, while the works of men, provided they conform to the good-pleasure of God, resemble the stars or the moon… Thus, should the followers of the Bayán observe the precepts of Him Whom God shall make manifest at the time of His appearance, and regard themselves and their own works as stars exposed to the light of the sun, then they will have gathered the fruits of their existence; otherwise the title of ‘starship’ will not apply to them. Rather it will apply to such as truly believe in Him, to those who pale into insignificance in the day-time and gleam forth with light in the night season.
Such indeed is the fruit of this precept, should anyone observe it on the Day of Resurrection. This is the essence of all learning and of all righteous deeds, should anyone but attain unto it. Had the peoples of the world fixed their gaze upon this principle, no Exponent of divine Revelation would ever have, at the inception of any Dispensation, regarded them as things of naught. However, the fact is that during the night season everyone perceiveth the light which he himself, according to his own capacity, giveth out, oblivious that at the break of day this light shall fade away and be reduced to utter nothingness before the dazzling splendour of the sun.”

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

VIII, 1
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, People, World

“As I look at drunkard men walking the streets of Montgomery and of other cities every day, I find myself saying, “But by the grace of God, you too would be a drunkard.” As I look at those who have lost balance of themselves and those who are giving their lives to a tragic life of pleasure and throwing away everything they have in riotous living, I find myself saying, “But by the grace of God, I too would be here.” And when you see that point, you cannot be arrogant. But you walk through life with a humility that takes away the self-centeredness that makes you a disintegrated personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Life, Men, God, Personality

“It was a great pleasure to make a movie again. Nothing is better; perhaps revolution, but there you have to succeed and be right, dangers which never attach themselves to making movies, and dreaming.”

Abraham Polonsky (1910–1999) American politician

as quoted in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson, page 689, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41128-3.

Dreams

“Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.”

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer

The Lover's Watch, "Four o'Clock General Conversation" (1686).

Love, Secret

“Ordinarily the enjoyment of sensual pleasures is the highest and only happiness of the average man. There is no doubt a kind of momentary happiness in the anticipation, gratification and retrospection of such fleeting material pleasures, but they are illusive and temporary. According to the Buddha non-attachment is a greater bliss.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

Happiness

“Youth is not the age of pleasure; we then expect too much, and we are therefore exposed to daily disappointments and mortifications. When we are a little older, and have brought down our wishes to our experience, then we become calm and begin to enjoy ourselves.”

Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (1770–1828) British politician

Treasury of Wisdom, Wit and Humor, Odd Comparisons and Proverbs: Authors, 931 ; Subjects, 1393 ; Quotations, 10, 200, p. 399

Youth, Age, Disappointment

“The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.”

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

Homily during the Holy Mass at the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C., on 7 October 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to the United States Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19791007_usa-washington_en.html

Life, People, Family, Heart

“A sensible man takes pleasure in what he has instead of pining for what he has not.”

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

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

“A further justification for the study of philosophy is that for many people it can be a very pleasurable activity. There is something to be said for this defence of philosophy. Its danger is that it could be taken to be reducing philosophical activity to the equivalent of solving crossword puzzles.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

People, Study

“With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. II; XVII
Lacon (1820)

Law, Birth

“I confess I have often fancied myself transformed into some other person, and have felt a certian pleasure in seeing myself in my new chracter. One of our first amusements as children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as a change—to be fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but what we really are.”

Wilkie Collins book The Law and the Lady

The Law and the Lady [Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1875] ( p. 195) Also in Gothic Returns in Collins, Dickens, Zola, and Hitchcock by Eleanor Salotto [Springer, 2016, ISBN 1-137-11770-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=qPmE-w86r0AC&pg=PA195 ( p. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=recYDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA39) The Law and the Lady (1875)

Children, Imagination, Change, Personality

“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 26

Pain, Marriage

“Them fancy London types don't know the pleasure of eating chips with fingers”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

“A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem of his own unfruitful life:
And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze
On the more distant scene,—how lovely 'tis
Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time,
When nature had subdued him to herself,
Would he forget those Beings to whose minds,
Warm from the labours of benevolence,
The world and human life appeared a scene
Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh,
Inly disturbed, to think that others felt
What he must never feel: and so, lost Man!
On visionary views would fancy feed,
Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale
He died,—this seat his only monument.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Lines (1795)

Love, Life, World, Beauty

“Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 290

Youth, Age

“I also don't think it's unsophisticated to think of God the Father as the spirit that arises from the crowd that exists into the future. You make sacrifices in the present so that the future is happy with you. The question is, then, what is that future that would be happy with you? It's the spirit of humanity. That's who you're negotiating with, because you make the assumption that if you forgo impulsive pleasure and get your medical degree, that when you're done in ten years and when you're a physician, humanity as such will honor your sacrifice and commitment, and it will open the doors to you. So you're treating the future as if it's a single being, and you're also treating it as if it's a compassionate judge. You're acting that out. And maybe, once we figured out that there is a future, we needed to imagine God in that form in order to concretize something that we could bargain with so that we could figure out how to use sacrifice so that we could guide ourselves into the future. Because if sacrifice is a contract with the future, but not with any particular person, then it is a contract with the spirit of humanity as such. It's something like that. To come up with the idea that you can bargain with the future is THE major idea of humankind. We suffer. What do we do about it? We figure out how to bargain with the future. And we minimize suffering in that manner.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

God, Happiness, Imagination, Idea

“It is highly doubtful if the Mughal period deserves the credit it has been given as a period of religious tolerance. Akbar is now known only for his policy of sulh-i-kul, at least among the learned Hindus. It is no more remembered that to start with he was also a pious Muslim who had viewed as jihãd his sack of Chittor. Nor is it understood by the learned Hindus that his policy of sulh-i-kul was motivated mainly by his bid to free himself from the stranglehold of the orthodox ‘Ulamã, and that any benefit which Hindus derived from it was no more than a by-product. Akbar never failed to demand daughters of the Rajput kings for his harem. Moreover, as our citations show, he was not able to control the religious zeal of his functionaries at the lower levels so far as Hindu temples were concerned. Jahãngîr, like many other Muslim kings, was essentially a pleasure-seeking person. He, however, became a pious Muslim when it came to Hindu temples of which he destroyed quite a few. Shãh Jahãn did not hide what he wanted to do to the Hindus and their places of worship. His Islamic record on this score was much better than that of Jahãngîr. The reversal of Akbar’s policy thus started by his two immediate successors reached its apotheosis in the reign of Aurangzeb, the paragon of Islamic piety in the minds of India’s Muslims. What is more significant, Akbar has never been forgiven by those who have regarded themselves as custodians of Islam, right upto our own times; Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is a typical example. In any case one swallow has never made a summer.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Motivation, Learning, Time, Summer

“The Courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgement; the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Law, Exercises, Sense

“The film studios learned to our dismay but to their pleasure that if they spent $200 million making a film they could make half a billion on it. So they were not interested anymore in quality films… They can’t afford to be that risky at those prices. Consequently you’re getting a lot of remakes, sequels, dopey comedies full of toilet jokes…”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

BBC radio interview (2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-JHO9BoJM.

Learning

“p>Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.”

Christopher Marlowe The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2. Compare: "To shallow rivers, to whose falls / Melodious birds sings madrigals; / There will we make our peds of roses, / And a thousand fragrant posies", William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. scene i. (Sung by Evans.)

Love, Mountain, Bird, Singing

“And so the arbitrary union of three incommensurate, mutually disconnected concepts became the basis of a bewildering theory… [by which] one of the lowest renderings of art, art for mere pleasure — against which all of the master teachers warned — was idealized as the ultimate in art.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Art, Teachers

“How far down the evolutionary scale shall we go? Shall we eat fish? What about shrimps? Oysters? To answer these questions we must bear in mind the central principle on which our concern for other beings is based. As I said … the only legitimate boundary to our concern for the interests of other beings is the point at which it is no longer accurate to say that the other being has interests. To have interests, in a strict, nonmetaphorical sense, a being must be capable of suffering or experiencing pleasure. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering, or for refusing to count it equally with the like suffering of any other being. But the converse of this is also true. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

Question, Sense, Fish, Suffering

“There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

"Evolution of the Human Brain" (1964), p. 3

Pain, Color, Understanding, Science

“A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger. In this case, the destruction or killing of the object is the biologically purposeful goal. The original motive is not pleasure in destruction. Rather the destruction serves the "life instinct"…and is an attempt to avoid anxiety and to preserve the ego in its totality. I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live…”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique

Life, Motivation

“The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.”

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer

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

People

“Moses … denied to the members of the sacred commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

69.
On the Special Laws

Food, Soul, Sense, Evil

“We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"The Long Habit"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Search, Time

“The body is like the wife to the spirit. The two must cohabit to create new forms, but their pleasures rarely coincide.”

Subhash Kak (1947) Indian computer scientist

The Prajna Sutra (2007)

“The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

On trying to understand Soviet policies, as quoted in The Wise Men (1986) by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas

“Why, alas! is life decreed
Full of pain and full of sorrow?
All uncertain as it is,
Can we rest upon to-morrow?
Why should blessings yet in store,
Hold us still in expectation?
Leading thro' succeeding sorrows,
By some fond anticipation:
'Tis to give a tender interest
To the scenes in which we're moving:
While those hopes so often blasted,
Sensual pleasures are reproving.”

Elizabeth Bath (1776–1844) English poet

"An Effusion", from Poems, on Various Occasions (1806)

Life, Pain, Hope

“We know that the enemies of our civilization and of Arab-Muslim civilization have emerged from what is actually a root cause. The root cause is the political slum of client states from Saudi Arabia through Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere, that has been allowed to dominate the region under U. S. patronage, and uses people and resources as if they were a gas station with a few flyblown attendants. To the extent that this policy, this mentality, has now changed in the administration, to the extent that their review of that is sincere and the conclusions that they draw from it are sincere, I think that should be welcomed. It's a big improvement to be intervening in Iraq against Saddam Hussein instead of in his favor. I think it makes a nice change. It's a regime change for us too. Now I'll state what I think is gonna happen. I've been in London and Washington a lot lately and all I can tell you is that the spokesmen for Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush walk around with a look of extraordinary confidence on their faces, as if they know something that when disclosed, will dissolve the doubts, the informational doubts at any rate, of people who wonder if there is enough evidence. [Mark Danner: It's amazing they've been able to keep it to themselves for so long. ] I simply say, I have two reasons for confidence. I know perfectly well that there are many people who would not be persuaded by this evidence even if it was dumped on their own doorstep, because the same people, many of the same people, didn't believe that it was worth fighting in Afghanistan even though the connection between the Taliban and Al Qaeda was as clear as could possibly be. So I know that. There's a strong faction of the so-called peace movement that is immune to evidence and also incapable of self criticism, of imagining what these countries would be like if the advice of the peaceniks has been followed. I also made some inquiries of my own, and I think I know what some of these disclosures will be. But, as a matter of fact I think we know enough. And what will happen will be this: The President will give an order, there will then occur in Iraq a show of military force like nothing probably the world has ever seen. It will be rapid and accurate and overwhelming enough to deal with an army or a country many times the size of Iraq, even if that country possessed what Iraq does not, armed forces in the command structure willing to obey and be the last to die for the supreme leader. And that will be greeted by the majority of Iraqi people and Kurdish people as a moment of emancipation, which will be a pleasure to see, and then the hard work of the reconstitution of Iraqi society and the repayment of our debt — some part of our debt to them — can begin. And I say, bring it on.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"How Should We Use Our Power: A Debate on Iraq" http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/03/03-01hitchensdanner-qa.html with Mark Danner at UC Berkeley (2003-01-28}: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq 2000s, 2003

People, World, Peace, Confidence

“The pleasure of being with you is in the clash of personality, the intellectual battle, the war of ideas. To survive you one must have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a dynamic character. In your luncheon-parties, in old days, the remains of the guests were taken away with the débris of the feast. I have often lunched with you in Park Lane and found myself the only survivor.”

Frank Harris (1856–1931) Irish journalist and rogue

Oscar Wilde, letter to Frank Harris, June 13, 1897, in The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962) p. 608.
Criticism

War, Idea, Strong, Personality

“Lacey takes the bar from me and reluctantly bites into it. She has to close her eyes to hide the orgasmic pleasure inherent in GoFast-tasting. "Oh. My. God. That tastes like hope feels."”

John Green book Paper Towns

Lacey Pemberton, pp. 255-256
Paper Towns (2008)

God, Hope, Feeling

“Well, I once wrote in - it's in Joan Mitchell Paints a Picture, as I remember, Irving Sandler, a long time ago, that I hated the word 'Nature' with a capital 'N.'... But now I accept it, I suppose. I mean, I really like trees and flowers and dogs and all that much more than.... a lot of other people [do]... You know, I really do get pleasure out of... Great pleasure. Out of just looking at... But I have fun here [New York] too, you know.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

Hate, People, Dogs, Flowers

“I had given up [around 1950] any ambition of making a career as an artist... I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Batons rompus, 1986, pp. 7-8

Love, Children, World, Art

“If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;
God to their cares and fears will set no bound.
What would content you? Who can tell?
Ye fear so much to lose what you have got
As if ye liked it well.
Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

“Of Greatness”

God, Fear

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

Reading

“Having in mind the theory of relativity, both special and general, I should like to extend with pleasure my warm greetings to all in attendance, colleagues and guests, no matter whether they consider themselves as eastbound or westbound citizens.
…I have always compared nations with heterogeneous conglomerates made up of individuals or social groups, all strongly cemented by homogeneous ethical feelings. Such indeed should also be our unique charming blue planet, and I nurse the hope that during what is left of time I shall witness the end product of such a process of international diagenesis. The reappearance of the Halley's Comet is perhaps an omen in this respect…”

Ivan Kostov Nikolov (1913–2004) Bulgarian mineralogist

Hope, Feeling, Time

“Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions. What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

108 - 110
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Love, Pain, Happiness, Soul

“It's always such a pleasure to have Germans enlighten us on the best way to move large groups of sick, downtrodden people by rail. The only motivation I can ascribe to such behavior is that same one that propels young dim boys to tear the wings off flies.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

TRIBES https://web.archive.org/web/20050912004041/http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html (5 September 2005) 2000s

People, Way, Behavior, Boy

“England’s genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Solution http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20586&c=323, l. 35-42 1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Life, Men, Soul, Heart

“Dialogue in Hell:
Seventeenth Dialogue

Montesquieu:… Now I understand the apologue the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Hindu idol and each one of your fingers touches a spring. In the same way that you touch everything, are you also able to see everything?
Machiavelli: Yes, for I shall make of the police an institution so vast that in the heart of my kingdom half of the people shall see the other half…
…If, as I scarcely doubt, I succeed in attaining this result, here are some of the forms by which my police would manifest themselves abroad: men of pleasure and good company in the foreign courts, to keep an eye on the intrigues of the princes and of the exiled pretenders…the establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and book stores places in the same conditions and secretly subsidized.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Men, God, People, Books

“The doctrine of the cynics is the Ideal reversed, the parody of physical and moral beauty, the crime of mind, the degradation of imagination. I could not take pleasure in it. There was too much enthusiasm within me to permit me to crawl through those sinks of the brain. My nature had wings. The dangers to which I was exposed were above, not below.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book VI, Note V, p. 86
Les confidences (1849)

Beauty, Imagination, Nature

“I've tried it with men and women and boys and girls, in the dark and in the desert sun, with people I cared for and people I didn't give a damn about, and I have never understood the pleasure in it. The best it's ever been for me is not uncomfortable.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

God Is An Iron (1977)

Women, Men, People, Girl

“In every nation thou beholdest unnumbered spiritual leaders who are bereft of true discernment, and among every people thou dost encounter myriads of adherents who are devoid of the same characteristic. Ponder for a while in thy heart, have pity on thyself and turn not aside thine attention from proofs and evidences. However, seek not proofs and evidences after thine idle fancy; but rather base thy proofs upon what God hath appointed. Moreover, know thou that neither being a man of learning nor being a follower is in itself a source of glory. If thou art a man of learning, thy knowledge becometh an honour, and if thou art a follower, thine adherence unto leadership becometh an honour, only when these conform to the good-pleasure of God.”

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

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

God, People, Art, Knowledge

“The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

The Newcomes http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/newcm10.txt (1853-1855), Ch. 9.

Life

“Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.”

John Stuart Mill book Utilitarianism

Source: Utilitarianism (1861), Ch. 2

Fools, Feeling, Intelligence, Change

“The greatest car ever should get out there and do the job, but it should do more besides, which is why I have to say it's the Ferrari 355. This car is as much a piece of sculpture as a lump of engineering. You could derive as much pleasure from putting it in your living room, where the piano used to be, and looking at it as you could from going for a drive.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 23

Cars

“Many pleasant things are better when they belong to someone else. … When things belong to others, we enjoy them twice as much, without the risk of losing them, and with the pleasure of novelty.”

Baltasar Gracián book The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Muchas cosas de gusto no se han de poseer en propiedad. … Gózanse las cosas ajenas con doblada fruición, esto es, sin el riesgo del daño y con el gusto de la novedad.
Maxim 263
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

“The appreciation of the connoisseur is the highest pleasure of the artiste.”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 9 (p. 104)

“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.”

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

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", page 385 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=402&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Truth, Error, Support, Science

“The extreme pleasure we take in talking about ourselves should make us afraid that we may scarcely be giving any to our listeners.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

L’extrême plaisir que nous prenons à parler de nous-mêmes nous doit faire craindre de n’en donner guere à ceux qui nous écoutent.
Translation by E.H. Blackmore et. al., in Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, de La Rochefoucauld, Oxford University Press (2008) : ISBN 019162313X
Maxim 314
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“And what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on?”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: The Path to Rome (1902), p. 421

Beauty

“This was the angerless philosophy of Owen, which inspired him with a forbearance that never failed him, and gave him that regnant manner which charmed all who met him. We shall see what his doctrine of environment has done for society, if we notice what it began to do in his day, and what it has done since.
Men perished by battle, by tempest, by pestilence, Faith might comfort, but it did not save them. In every town, nests of pestilence co-existed with the churches, who were concerned alone with worship. Disease was unchecked by devotion. Then Owen asked, "Might not safety come by improved material condition?" As the prayer of hope brought no reply, as the scream of agony, if heard, was unanswered, as the priest, with the holiest intent, brought no deliverance, it seemed prudent to try the philosopher and the physician.
Then Corn Laws were repealed, because prayers fed nobody. Then parks were multiplied because fresh air was found to be a condition of health. Alleys and courts, were begun to be abolished-since deadly diseases were bred there. Streets were widened, that towns might be ventilated. Hours of labour were shortened, since exhaustion means liability to epidemic contagion. Recreation was encouraged, as change and rest mean life and strength. Temperance — thought of as self-denial — was found to be a necessity, as excess of any kind in diet, or labour, or pleasure means premature death. Those who took dwellings began to look, not only to drainage and ventilation, but to the ways of their near neighbours, as the most pious family may poison the air you breathe unless they have sanitary habits.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Memorial dedication (1902)

Life, Death, Men, Health

“Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they "own" their bodies — those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Letter XXI
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Men, World

“No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Truth
Essays (1625)

Truth

“The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world, do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it with any pleasure.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

March 10, 1666
Diary

Life, Men, Truth, Age

“My one abiding principle has been to translate everything – even puns. For although this is… an 'unfinished' novel, it was written (and rewritten) by a great artist with his very lifeblood. I have therefore assumed that whatever I find in it is there for a purpose and must be dealt with somehow or other. I cannot pretend always to have done so successfully, but if I can convey to the reader even a fraction of the pleasure this Chinese novel has given me, I shall not have lived in vain.”

David Hawkes (sinologist) (1923–2009) British sinologist

Introduction to The Story of the Stone, Vol. 1: 'The Golden Days' (1973), p. 46
Preface to The Golden Days, 1973

“Certain sensory experiences during the formative periods of development will create a neuropsychological predisposition for either violence-seeking or pleasure-seeking behaviors later in life.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)

Life, Behavior

“I'm weary, I'm weary. Oh! pleasure is pain
When its spell has been broken again and again.
I am weary of smiles that are bought and are sold,
I am weary of beauty whose fetters are gold,
I am weary of wealth—what makes it of me
But that which the basest and lowest might be?”

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

The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
The Golden Violet (1827)

Pain, Smile, Beauty, Wealth

“Nowhere is patriarchy's iron fist as naked as in the oppression of animals, which serves as the model and training ground for all other forms of oppression. Its three basic strategies — the club, the yoke, and the leash — operate similarly in the oppression of women and minorities. The club strategy is to kill animals for gain, sadistic pleasure, and the "affirmation of manhood." It is domination through brute force. The yoke strategy is to domesticate animals to carry burdens and pull vehicles; supply eggs, wool, and milk; and provide flesh and skins. It is domination through enslavement. The leash strategy is to tame animals to provide the psychic benefits of direct rule of master over pet. It is domination through deceit. … It is a surprisingly close progression from hunting animals to hunting and torturing people — catching and lynching blacks or "smoking out" Jews during the Holocaust.”

Aviva Cantor (1940) Author, journalist and lecturer

"The Club, the Yoke, and the Leash: What We Can Learn From the Way a Culture Treats Animals," in Ms. magazine, Vol. 12 https://books.google.it/books?id=Z2gpAAAAYAAJ, No. 2 (August 1983).

Women, People, Animals, Training

“When he saw Tiny, he was delighted, and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head, and placed it on hers, and asked her name, and if she would be his wife, and queen over all the flowers. This certainly was a very different sort of husband to the son of a toad, or the mole, with my black velvet and fur; so she said, "Yes," to the handsome prince. Then all the flowers opened, and out of each came a little lady or a tiny lord, all so pretty it was quite a pleasure to look at them. Each of them brought Tiny a present; but the best gift was a pair of beautiful wings, which had belonged to a large white fly and they fastened them to Tiny's shoulders, so that she might fly from flower to flower.”

Hans Christian Andersen Thumbelina

Thumbelina
Fairy Tales (1835)

Beauty, Flowers, Flying

“‘Brethren, if outsiders should speak against me, or against the Doctrine, or against the Order, you should not on that account either bear malice, or suffer heart-burning, or feel ill will. If you, on that account, should be angry and hurt, that would stand in the way of your, own self-conquest. If, when others speak against us, you feel angry at that, and displeased, would you then be able to judge how far that speech of theirs is well said or ill?’
‘That would not be so, Sir.’
‘But when outsiders speak in dispraise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should unravel what is false and point it out as wrong, saying: “For this or that reason this is not the fact, that is not so, such a thing is not found among us, is not in us.”
‘But also, brethren, if outsiders should speak in praise of me, in praise of the Doctrine, in praise of the Order, you should not, on that account, be filled with pleasure or gladness, or be lifted up in heart. Were you to be so that also would stand in the way of your self-conquest. When outsiders speak in praise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should acknowledge what is right to be the fact, saying: “For this or that reason this is the fact, that is so, such a thing is found among us, is in us.””

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

T. W. Rhys Davids trans. (1899), Brahmajāla Sutta, verse 1.5-6 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Brahmajala_Sutta#Brahmaj.C4.81la_Sutta_.5B9.5D_-_The_Perfect_Net (text at archive.org https://archive.org/stream/bookofdiscipline02hornuoft#page/3/mode/1up), as cited in: (1992). A Comparative History of Ideas, p. 221-2 Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses)

Way, Feeling, Suffering, Heart

“My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could be for his life, and and for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength — and his weakness, too. — His strength — for he was by nature eloquent — and his weakness — for he was hourly a dupe to it; and provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one — (bating the case of a systematic misfortune)— he had all he wanted.— A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune was as five”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.
Book V, Ch. 3.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life, Pain, Nature

“A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.”

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) Irish writer

Vivian, ch. 7; Tales and Novels, vol. 8, p. 80.

Country

“Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 151 (27 August 1751). http://books.google.com/books?id=VvhDAAAAYAAJ&q=%22avarice+is+generally+the+last+passion+of+those+lives+of+which+the+first+part+has+been+squandered+in+pleasure+and+the+second+devoted+to+ambition%22&pg=PA262#v=onepage The Rambler (1750–1752)

Passion, Parting

“The name of happiness is but a wider term
for the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life,
attendant on all function, and not to be deny'd
to th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of nature
spiritual is by definition unnatural.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Book IV, lines 533-537.
The Testament of Beauty (1929-1930)

Life, Happiness, Soul, Nature

“All the pictures [in the exhibition, 1910] include a plus-factor, which robs the public [in Munich] of her pleasure but which is in every case the principal merit of the work; the completely spiritualized, de-materialized awardness of perception, which our fathers, the artists of the nineteenth century, never even tried to achieve in their 'pictures'. This bold undertaking, to take the 'matiere', which Impressionism sank its teeth into, and spiritualize it, is a necessary reaction, which began with Gauguin in Pont-Aven, and has already fostered innumerable experiments… The way the Munich public condemns the exhibition is almost amusing.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Franz Marc's note on the reception of the second exhibition of the 'Neue KünstlerVereinigung' in Munich, September 1910; as cited by , in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 125
1905 - 1910

Way

“The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climes, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator. (Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured into Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?")”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Pain, Beauty, Soul, Hell

“She was a grown up now, and she discovered that being a grown up was not quite what she had suspected it would be when she was a child. She had thought then that she would make a conscious decision one day to simply put her toys and games and little make-believes away. Now she discovered that was not what happened at all. Instead, she discovered, interest simply faded. It became less and less and less, until a dust of years drew over the bright pleasures of childhood, and they were forgotten.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

Game, Decision, Childhood

“Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Life, Happiness, People, Faith

“Nietzsche … criticizes Schopenhauerian aesthetics for not freeing itself from Kant’s moralistic: ‘that is beautiful which gives us pleasure without interest’.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 95

Beauty

“I am busy working on a large painting with sheep; the last days I am working with real pleasure, the weather is.... not too hot and with nice skies. It's great here!!!! I shout with joy the whole day and more and more I desire to stay here until the end.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Ik ben druk bezig aan een groot schilderij met schapen, in de laatste dagen ben ik met waar genoegen aan het werk, het weer is.. ..niet al te warm en mooie luchten. 't Is hier heerlijk!!!! Ik jubel steeds en verlang hoe langer hoe meer hier te blijven tot het einde.
In a letter of Mauve, from Laren 1885, to his student nl:Arina Hugenholtz, as quoted by Arina Hugenholtz in In Memoriam Anton Mauve; as cited in Van IJs naar Sneeuw - De ontwikkeling van het wintergezicht in de 19de eeuw, Arsine Nazarian, Juli 2008 Utrecht University; studentnummer: 0360953, p. 85
Mauve's mood was frequently moving between depression and cheerful moods, as many related people knew
1880's

Business, Joy, Painting, Weather

“Live while you live, the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day;
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my views, let both united be:
I live in pleasure when I live to thee.”

Philip Doddridge (1702–1751) English Nonconformist leader, educator, and hymnwriter

Epigram on his Family Arms, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

God

“The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel's quote is referring to his youth in Amsterdam, in the outskirts and the ports of the Dutch city
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Life, Death, Youth, Law

“People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. …People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i. e., pleasure.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

People, Beauty, Art, Understanding

“we made love on the living room floor
with the noise in the background of a televised war
and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say
if we walk away they'll walk away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

landlocked blues
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Love, War

“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 2 (July 17, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

History, Selfishness

“The things that we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from. From the normal vantage point, it certainly seems that only with discipline can we withstand the temptations that surround us: overeating, drugs, video games, mindless internet surfing, and everything else we consume. These things are undeniably destructive to our own lives and beyond; therefore, it would seem, we cannot always trust desire at all. But when we recognize that these are not really what we desire, our goal becomes not to suppress desire but to identify the true want or need, and to fulfill it. That is no trivial task; it is a profound path of self-realization.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible http://charleseisenstein.net/project/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/ The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

Game, Thinking, Joy

“One day the king was going to hunt the animals in the parks in which the barbarians keep lions and bears and leopards, and he asked Apollonius to accompany him on the chase, but the latter replied: "You have forgotten, O king, that I never attend you, even when you are sacrificing. And moreover, it is no pleasure to me to attack animals that have been ill-treated and enslaved in violation of their nature."”

Philostratus book Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Book 1, § 37.
Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Nature, Animals

“So the Free Man is Free. Absolutely Free. Not just a little bit free. Not cut off from all of this. That's not the nature of His Freedom—humorlessness relative to the world still, non-pleasure still. No, in His Freedom He becomes capable of humor in life, capable of pleasure, or enjoyment, in the forms that are arising. That is the fullness of God-Realization. All of the humorless, pleasureless forms of experience that are often associated with God-Realization in the traditions are not God-Realization in Truth.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Sex, Laughter, and Real-God-Realization 1975

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/slg.php

Life, God, Truth, World

“I heard of your marriage, Cathy, not long since; and, while waiting in the yard below, I meditated this plan — just to have one glimpse of your face — a stare of surprise, perhaps, and pretended pleasure; afterward settle my score with Hindley; and then prevent the law by doing execution on myself. Your welcome has put these ideas out of my mind; but beware of meeting me with another aspect next time!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. X).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Marriage, Law, Idea, Time

“The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 113 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+pleasure+we+derive+from+doing+favors+is+partly+in+the+feeling+it+gives+us+that+we+are+not+altogether+worthless%22&pg=PA72#v=onepage The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Feeling

“If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Si nous n'avions point de défauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres.
Maxim 31.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

No. 153 (25 August 1711)
The Spectator (1711-1714)

Youth, Age, Sex, Personality

“Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 38

“We may also, I think, congratulate ourselves on the part that the British Empire has played in this struggle, and on the position which it fills at the close. Among the many miscalculations of the enemy was the profound conviction, not only that we had a "contemptible little Army," but that we were a doomed and decadent nation. The trident was to be struck from our palsied grasp, the Empire was to crumble at the first shock; a nation dedicated, as we used to be told, to pleasure-taking and the pursuit of wealth was to be deprived of the place to which it had ceased to have any right, and was to be reduced to the level of a second-class, or perhaps even of a third-class Power. It is not for us in the hour of victory to boast that these predictions have been falsified; but, at least, we may say this—that the British Flag never flew over a more powerful or a more united Empire than now; Britons never had better cause to look the world in the face; never did our voice count for more in the councils of the nations, or in determining the future destinies of mankind. That that voice may be raised in the times that now lie before us in the interests of order and liberty, that that power may be wielded to secure a settlement that shall last, that that Flag may be a token of justice to others as well as of pride to ourselves, is our united hope and prayer.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Lie, World, Justice, Hope

“He is the most intelligent, intellectually curious, and charming man I have ever had the pleasure of meeting”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Speaking about Bill Clinton, Source: The Times, 1997.

Intelligence

“I just want to congratulate Kumar again on a wonderful career. I have spoken a lot about him, everyone has, in the last week, but I can't help saying it again that it has been an absolute pleasure playing with you.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

Virat Kohli, "Virat Kohli Says it Has Been a Pleasure Playing With Kumar Sangakkara" http://sports.ndtv.com/sri-lanka-vs-india-2015/news/247470-virat-kohli-says-it-has-been-a-pleasure-playing-with-kumar-sangakkara, August 24, 2015. About

Help

“The only merit of which I personally am conscious was that of having pleased myself by my studies, and any results that may be due to my researches were owing to the fact that it has been a pleasure for me to become a physicist.”

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842–1919) English physicist

On receiving the Order of Merit (1902)

Study, Personality

“Stimulation of brain pleasure centers can eliminate feelings of rage, fear, and depression.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Before Ethics and Morality" (1972)

Fear, Feeling, Rage

“By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?"”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

What more valuable for the elevation of our own character?
Timoleon
Parallel Lives

Understanding, Study, Personality

“Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another’s work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

‘Hypothesis and Imagination’ in The Art of the Soluble, 1967.
1960s

Travel, Sense, Dependency, Despair

“The sphinx atropos squeakes when hurt, nearly as loud as a mouse, which, when uttered in the most plaintive tone, naturally shocks the human heart, and makes it shudder at the thought of destroying inoffensive animals merely for the sake of curiosity. I cannot help reflecting on this tyranny, this wanton cruelty, exercised by thoughtless man, on many animals but especially in insects: 'tis certain, that every animal possessing life, has feeling; and, therefore, is as capable of suffering pain, as of enjoying pleasure; and, as Shakespeare humanely expresses “The poor beetle crushed beneath the foot, feels the pangs of death as great as when a monarch falls.””

James Barbut English painter and naturalist

Gentle reader, pardon this digression, my feelings commanded my pen.
The Genera Insectorum of Linnæus, Exemplified by Various Specimens English Insects drawn by Nature (1781)

Life, Death, Pain, Feeling

“Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim
At objects in an airy height;
The little pleasure of the game
Is from afar to view the flight.”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

To the Honorable Charles Montague (1692).

Hope, Game

Quotes about pleasure page 8

Quotes about pleasure
page 8