“The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain; and the object of economics is to maximize happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain.”

“Pleasure has desire in it. Desire is pain. There is no satisfaction. So pleasure is pain.”

“My experience is that everything is bliss. But the desire for bliss creates pain. Thus bliss becomes the seed of pain. The entire universe of pain is born of desire. Give up the desire for pleasure and you will not even know what is pain. (…) for the sake of pleasure you are committing many sins. And the fruits of sin are suffering and death.”

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

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”

“It’s too cold. Away from the worlds, where a little pleasure costs a lot of pain. Don’t make trouble.”

“Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.”

“In this work I have attempted to treat economy as a calculus of pleasure and pain, and have sketched out, almost irrespective of previous opinions, the form which the science, as it seems to me, must ultimately take.”

“Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure;
Rich the treasure;
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.”