"Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it."
Jeremy Bentham"Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.”
Voltaire"Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil."
Plato“I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.”
John D. Rockefeller"In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures."
Cicero"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it."
Thomas Jefferson"The limits of pleasures are as yet neither known nor fixed, and we have
no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining."
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin"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."
De Witt Clinton"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."
Sigmund Freud"The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain."
Aristotle"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."
Joseph Addison"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."
Charles Lamb"Pleasure is none, if not diversified."
John Donne"Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions."
Pierre Charron"Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys."
Christian Nestell Bovee“Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad”
Victor Hugo"God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain."
C. S. Lewis"When the idea of any pleasure strikes your imagination, make a just computation between the duration of the pleasure and that of the repentance that is likely to follow it."
Epictetus"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."
Thomas Traherne"Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.”
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort"A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
Walter Bagehot"That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.”
Edgar Allan Poe"Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure-that of being Salvador Dali”
Salvador Dalí“Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.”
William S. Burroughs“Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.”
Stendhal"Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."
Samuel Johnson“It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.”
Marquis De Sade"Take life too seriously, and what is it worth? If the morning wake us to no new joys, if the evening bring us not the hope of new pleasure, is it worthwhile to dress and undress?"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe"...the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”
Carl Sagan"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”
Bertrand Russell"Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations."
Jane Austen“An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young”
Oscar Wilde"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."
Roland Barthes"Rascals are always sociable - more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company."
Arthur Schopenhauer"The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it."
H. L. Mencken"The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain."
Marina Warner"Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity such as I cannot derive from other realms."
Albert Einstein"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."
Nathaniel Branden"No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety."
Publilius Syrus"The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all."
Nathaniel Hawthorne"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."
Jane Austen"The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them, and they make us despair in losing them."
Madame Anne Therese de Lambert"You are quaffing drink from a hundred fountains: whenever any of these hundred yields less, your pleasure is diminished. But when the sublime fountain gushes from within you, no longer need you steal from the other fountains."
Jalal-Uddin Rumi"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about."
Oscar Wilde"Pleasure is a sort of oblivion, a forgetfulness. Pain is remembrance, you cannot forget pain.”
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh"The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them and they make us despair in losing them."
Madame De Lambert"A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last."
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton"People have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others."
Marcel Proust
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Quotations on Utopia
Quotations about Paradise
Quotations about Happiness
Quotations about Suffering and its Abolition
Oxytocin, Chemical Addiction and Science of Love
