“The question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures.”

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 5: A Crisis in My Mental History (p. 102)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person …" by John Stuart Mill?
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill 179
British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873

Related quotes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"Definitions of Poetry" (1811).
Context: Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

Abraham Lincoln photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“When pleasure is made a business, it ceases to be pleasure.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 115

Leo Tolstoy photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind.”

Autobiography (1873)
Context: Scott does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.

Ilana Mercer photo
Ali Shariati photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“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

Aphra Behn photo

“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).

Related topics