Motivational Quotes

Pleasure

Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

- Barthes, Roland

Best Quotes about Pleasure

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. [Proverbs 9:17]

Bible

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

Wilde, Oscar

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.

Bennett, Arnold

When pleasure interferes with business, give up business.

Proverb, American

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.

Bataille, Georges

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

Butler, Samuel

Barthes, Roland

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

Cicero, Marcus T.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Addison, Joseph

10.

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that --one is sure to get into some mess before evening.

Keats, John

11.

Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions.

Charron, Pierre

12.

So enjoy present pleasures as to not mar those to come.

Seneca

13.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

A fool bolts pleasure, then complains of moral indigestion.

Antrim, Minna

15.

To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.

Pascal, Blaise

16.

Pleasure is sweeter as recreation than as a business.

Hitchcock, Raymond

17.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

Donne, John

18.

Work is often the father of pleasure.

Voltaire

19.

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

20.

The eruption of lived pleasure is such that in losing myself I find myself; forgetting that I exist, I realize myself.

Vaneigem, Raoul

21.

Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

22.

God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.

Lewis, C. S.

23.

To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.

Buxton, Charles

24.

He is incapable of truly good action who finds not a pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

25.

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

Epictetus

26.

Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.

Jerrold, Douglas William

27.

Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.

Goldsmith, Oliver

28.

A young man of pleasure is a man of pains.

Young

29.

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.

Lucretius

30.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Plato

31.

Whenever I meet with anything agreeable in this world it surprises me so much -- and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested in one way or the other) that I go on wondering for a week to come.

Byron, Lord

32.

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

Johnson, Samuel

33.

Pleasure for one hour, a bottle of wine. Pleasure for one year a marriage; but pleasure for a lifetime, a garden.

Proverb, Chinese

34.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Little, Mary

35.

Pleasure that isn't paid for is as insipid as everything else that's free.

Loos, Anita

36.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Bagehot, Walter

37.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Franklin, Benjamin

38.

Short lived pleasure is the parent of pain.

Proverb

39.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

Warner, Marina

40.

People have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.

Proust, Marcel

41.

Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.

Traherne, Thomas

42.

The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us -- of becoming happy -- is not attainable: yet we may not -- nay, cannot -- give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.

Freud, Sigmund

43.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

Buffett, Warren

44.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Aristotle

45.

Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in frame, unlimited in space and indefinite in duration.

Clinton, De Witt

46.

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.

Branden, Nathaniel

47.

It's true Heaven forbids some pleasures, but a compromise can usually be found.

Moliere

48.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

Balzac, Honore De

49.

The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.

Drabble, Margaret

50.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.