Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes About Pleasure

Quotes about: Pleasure

• What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Sleep, Eye, Thinking

• I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Clever, Lying, People

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1896). “Recollections”, p.230, Library of Alexandria

• Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Life, Pain, Sacrifice

• If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Ignorance, Vices, Aristocracy

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Introduction, 1835.

• I do not find fault with equality for drawing men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, but for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Drawing, Faults

• No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Law, Differences

  Alexis De Tocqueville (2004). “Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II”, p.506, Bantam Classics

• It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Liberty, Care, Littles

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1870). “American Institutions”, p.116

• It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Girl, Children, May

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

• In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Marriage, Girl, Husband

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Three, Chapter X, 1840.

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