quotations about pleasure
Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Freedom from the Known
The contrast is between necessity and pleasure. To satisfy the first is legitimate and, in fact, obligatory; to renounce the second is possible, even meritorious. The problem is that the line of demarcation between necessity and pleasure is very fine and often imperceptible; when one eats or drinks, the two go together, inextricably bound. It is precisely from this observation that a culture of deep suspicion developed in Christian tradition toward the daily gestures of eating and drinking, so innocuous at first glance.
MASSIMO MONTANARI & BETH ARCHER BROMBERT
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table
I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, July 18, 1713
But there are pleasures appropriated to the true christian; joys which no stranger intermeddles with, in the exercise of pure and undefiled religion, which is not only a heightener of our delights, but is itself the greatest of any. Even as the sun imparts a brightness to every other object, and is himself the brightest of all. Whether he contemplates the delightful truths and ravishing mysteries of the gospel; the banquet of the mind, sweeter than all honey:--or practices spiritual duties towards his neighbor, or his God; when he prays with fervent supplication, or praises with joyful lips, or hears in his lovely tabernacles what God the Lord will say, or relieves the indigent for his Redeemer's sake, and comforts the distressed;--or exercises christian graces; be it faith, that is attended with joy unspeakable; or love, that is its own reward, and the fulfilling of the law; or hope, that anticipates the joys above, in blessful expectation, the surest anchor of the soul:--or mortifies fleshly lusts:--or resists temptations, triumphing over them with christian magnanimity:--or endures afflictions, with a becoming patience and cheerful resignation:--he tastes more solid pleasures than ever the sensualist could boast. Pleasures that are true in fruition, fully answering the most sanguine expectation. Pleasures, whose repetition does not cloy, and their continuance is not clogged with satiety. Pleasures, whose review fills not the cheek with blushing, being honorable and glorious as the immortal soul, and pure as the joys of angels. Pleasures, whose consequences are not dangerous--to the body, by wasting its beauty, or preying on its health;--to the reputation, by fixing upon it an indelible stain;--to the estate by making a shipwreck of it in the horrid gulf of prodigality. Especially not dangerous to the soul, by darkening the mind, fattening the heart, searing the conscience, and exposing to eternal vengeance.--Pleasures, whose duration is not short; that can live in the winter of adversity, illuminate the valley of death, and pass into eternity.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Pleasure", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Then love of pleasure sways each heart, and we
From that no more than from ourselves can fly.
Blameless when govern'd well. But where it errs
Extravagant, and wildly leads to ill,
Public or private, there its curbing pow'r
Cool reason must exert.
JOHN ARMSTRONG
"The Oeconomy Of Love"
The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Better to tread where thorns and briars wound,
And safely walk at last on heavenly ground--
Than for a while to bask in pleasure's bowers,
Fanned by her breath, and shaded 'mongst her flowers:
To feel the phantom ground beneath you slide,
And see wild desolation yawning wide
T' ingulph its victim; who, around in vain,
Despairing looks for pleasure's vanished train.
ELEANOR DICKINSON
"Pleasures of Piety", The Pleasures of Piety with Other Poems
Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
What is painful in pleasure? It is that in all pleasure a person desires eternity, but knows that pleasure is transient and will end. That is not a knowing that comes from a prior knowledge now applied to every pleasurable event; it is something that the depth of pleasure itself discloses to us if we listen to it: a thirst, a craving, for eternity, precisely because pleasure is not eternal but instead has fallen prey to death. On the other hand we ask: What pleasure is there in pain? It is that in the depth of pain a person feels pleasure in transience, pleasure in the obliteration of apparently endless pain, pleasure in death.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
Creation and Fall
The path to pleasure is frequently not pretty. One woman's misogynist may be the image of another woman's desire. And men have been known to hunger for those who hate them, too. There is a measure of spiritual authenticity in sleaze.
TRISTAN FOX
Vanity Fair, November 1984
Passing pleasures do but cloy,
And ape the consciousness of joy:
The wine, the women, and the song,
That tempt us here by night,
Are happy things, though not for long,
To wing oblivious flight
Above the dull, resenting pain,
That, waking, seizes on the brain,
And gives the moody fibre food
To mope, or captiously to brood,
With swollen eyes and torpid legs,
O'er foul and discontented dregs.
Ah! the quiet that did pall
Before I drank indulgence blind
Becomes the panacea in all
I seek, yet, seeking, cannot find.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Passing Pleasures", Imogen and Other Poems
Pleasure is a harmony--that is, a fitting together--a fitting of an external object with a mood or want within ourselves.
HERBERT MAXWELL
Littell's Living Age, March 12, 1892
Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure, can also agonize with pain.
HORACE MANN
A Few Thoughts for a Young Man
Business first, then pleasure.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Richelieu
We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Even though the pursuit of pleasure is part of the American dream--an unassailable right--it is a guilt-ridden hunt.
PALA COPELAND & AL LINK
Soul Sex
Pleasure is a crumbling statue.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Oh my meters running so I got to go now
It's the pleasure principle oh oh ohh
It's the principle of pleasure, ohh
It's the pleasure principle oh oh
JANET JACKSON
"The Pleasure Principle"
Pleasure is the sun of the morning, the cloud of the meridian, and the storm of the evening.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs