Pleasure Quotes - Page 20

• The misfortune is, that religious learning is too often rather considered as an act of the memory than of the heart and affections; as a dry duty, rather than a lively pleasure.

  Hannah More

  Religious, Memories, Heart

  Hannah More (1827). “The Works of Hannah More: With a Sketch of Her Life”, p.370

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• One little human truth is that opinionated people don't hold much with other people's opinions, and it is a great pleasure to some of them to be able to ascribe incurable defects, such as belonging to a certain sex; or base motives, or lack of understanding, to anyone whose views they disagree with.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Sex, Views, People

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• Looking for pleasure is the best way to ensure you won't find it.

  Francoise Sagan

  Way, Best Way

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• Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction leas; since sometimes our pleasure would be none but for telling of it, and our grief insupportable but for participation.

  William Wycherley

  Sympathy, Pain, Grief

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• Belief is as necessary to the soul as pleasures are necessary to the body.

  Elsa Schiaparelli

  Soul, Body, Belief

  Elsa Schiaparelli (1954). “Shocking Life”

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• Childhood is less clear to me than to many people: when it ended I turned my face away from it for no reason that I know about, certainly without the usual reason of unhappy memories. For many years that worried me, but then I discovered that the tales of former children are seldom to be trusted. Some people supply too many past victories or pleasures with which to comfort themselves, and other people cling to pains, real and imagined, to excuse what they have become.

  Lillian Hellman

  Children, Pain, Memories

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• Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.

  Madame de Stael

  Education, Spring, Research

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• The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.

  Madame de Stael

  Heart, Mind, Calm

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• The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel them again rather than recollect them.

  Madame de Stael

  Music, Memories, Regret

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• A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.

  Madame de Stael

  Voyages, Companionship, Conversation

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• You little know what you have done, when you have first broke the bounds of modesty; you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil, so that he can, almost at his pleasure ever after, represent the same sinful pleasure to you anew.

  Richard Baxter

  Doors, Devil, Done

  Richard Baxter (1815). “The poor man's best companion: in plain and familiar dialogues. With forms of prayer for various uses ... By the Rev. Richard Baxter”, p.221

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• A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Book, Taste, Glory

  Edward Gibbon (1869). “The Autobiography and Correspondence of Edward Gibbon, the Historian”, p.330

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• The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.

  Edward Gibbon

  Passion, Independent, Vigor

  Edward Gibbon (1796). “Miscellaneous Works of Edw. Gibbon: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself”, p.194

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• Surely a King who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory?

  Nancy Mitford

  Kings, Royalty, Glory

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• Truth illuminates and gives joy; and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held.

  Matthew Arnold

  Truth, Men, Giving

  Matthew Arnold (1865). “Essays in Criticism”, p.251

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• Italians do not regard food as merely fuel. They regard it as medicine for the soul, one of life's abiding pleasures.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Medicine, Soul, Abiding

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1989). “Italian Days”, p.17, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Infidelity is such a pretty word, so light and delicate. Whereas the act itself is dark and thick with guilt, betrayal, confusion, pain, and (okay) sometimes enormous pleasure.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Pain, Betrayal, Dark

  Cynthia Heimel (2002). “If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?!”, p.161, Grove Press

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• The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure - though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the forms of pleasure that art in a given time may offer.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Giving, Purpose

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• The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Intelligent, Moral

  Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.214, Macmillan

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• There are some elements in life - above all, sexual pleasure - about which it isn't necessary to have a position.

  Susan Sontag

  Elements, Position

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• I thank heaven I have often had it in my power to give help and relief, and this is still my greatest pleasure. If I could choose my sphere of action now, it would be that of the most simple and direct efforts of this kind.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Simple, Giving, Effort

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• The soul of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much in his own body. Its life, to a great extent, is a mere reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their bodies, and identifying its existence with their existence, finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains.

  Horace Mann

  Pain, Men, Soul

  Horace Mann (1867). “Lectures and Annual Reports on Education”, p.209

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• A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body.

  Immanuel Kant

  Exercise, Men, Two

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• A pen and a notebook and a reasonable amount of discrimination will change a journey from a mere annual into a perennial, its pleasures and pains renewable at will.

  Freya Stark

  Notebook, Pain, Journey

  Freya Stark (2014). “The Zodiac Arch”, p.137, I.B.Tauris

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• I suspect anyone self-satisfied enough to refuse lawful pleasures: we are not sufficiently rich in our separate resources to reject the graces of the universe when offered.

  Freya Stark

  Self, Grace, Rich

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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