quotations about pleasure
He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
PLATO
Protagoras
Pleasure is a river running to the sea; happiness is the full, calm sea.
PETER KREEFT
Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing
True pleasures are paid for in advance; false pleasures afterwards, with heavy and compound interest.
JOHN LUBBOCK
Peace and Happiness
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
JOHN KEATS
"Fancy"
So what do we know about the pursuit of pleasure compared to the pursuit of meaningful activities that also foster engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment? Can the seeking of pleasure alone lead to psychological well-being? Research shows that engagement and meaning are significantly related to well-being, whereas pleasure is negatively related to objective well-being, including things like education, achievement, and the absence of mental disorders. Engagement and meaning contribute more to well-being than pleasure, because they help people build resources that are valuable. Seeking pleasure provides a short-term reward but does not provide further skill or resource development.
JENNIFER W. SHEWMAKER
Sexualized Media Messages and Our Children
During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtue's sake.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Pleasure is labour too, and tires as much.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
The pleasure of any incident, whether it is of a sunset, or sexual, or any sensory pleasure, is recorded and thought over. So thought as pleasure plays a tremendous part in our life. Something happened yesterday which was a most lovely thing, a most happy event, it is recorded; thought comes upon it, chews it and keeps on thinking about it and wants it repeated tomorrow, whether it be sexual or otherwise. So thought gives vitality to an incident that is over.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
The Awakening of Intelligence
Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
Pleasure believes in friends, pleasure creates communities, pleasure crumbles faces into smiles, pleasure links hand in hand, pleasure restores, pain is the most selfish thing.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
"Pleasure", Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge
The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Where There Is Nothing
Your partner's pleasure is your pleasure.
JUDY FORD & RACHEL GREENE BALDINO
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enhancing Sexual Desire
Yet, sluggard, wake, and gull thy soul no more
With earth's false pleasures, and the world's delight,
Whose fruit is fair and pleasing to the sight,
But sour in taste, false as the putrid core:
Thy flaring glass is gems at her half light;
She makes thee seeming rich, but truly poor:
She boasts a kernel, and bestows a shell;
Performs an inch of her fair-promis'd ell:
Her words protest a heav'n; her works produce a hell.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike, any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same tree.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Pleasure is a hedonistic reflex, a burning impulse to abandon rational thought altogether and immerse oneself in the moment.
GENE WALLENSTEIN
The Pleasure Instinct