Pleasure Quotes - Page 22

• just because something is fun doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  Fun, Mean, Waste

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• living for oneself is a bad thing. The keenest intellectual pleasure comes from being able to return to the self after being absent from it for a spell. But living all the time inside the self, that most tyrannical, demanding and capricious of companions - no, one shouldn't do it.

  George Sand

  Self, Intellectual, Able

  Gustave Flaubert, George Sand (1999). “Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand”, Harvill Press

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• Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Grief, Self, Envy

  Thomas Hobbes, John Charles Addison Gaskin (1999). “The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives”, p.54, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities And virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Mother, Cheer, Worry

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.29

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• Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel.

  David Hume

  Giving, Quality, Opinion

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.206

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• Riches are valuable at all times, and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire; nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honor and virtue, which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

  David Hume

  Men, Honor, Age

  David Hume (1809). “Essays and treatises on several subjects in two volumes: Essays, moral, political, and literacy”, p.293

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• That society exists to frustrate the individual may be seen from its attitude to work. It is only morally acceptable if you do not want to do it. If you do want to, it becomes a personal pleasure.

  Celia Green

  Attitude, Work, May

  "The Decline and Fall of Science". Book by Celia Green, 1976.

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• There is hardly a more heart-thrilling pleasure enjoyed by mortals, than that which parents feel when seeing their child first being able to 'catch knowledge of objects.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Children, Learning, Heart

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• Scotland is the country above all others that I have seen, in which a man of imagination may carve out his own pleasures; there are so many inhabited solitudes.

  Dorothy Wordsworth

  Country, Men, Scotland

  Dorothy Wordsworth (1875). “Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803”, p.26

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• It is the right of war for conquerors to treat those whom they have conquered according to their pleasure.

  Julius Caesar

  War, Treats, Conquest

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 129-30, Bellum Gallicum, I. 36., 1922.

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• I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly people who take no delight in them.

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Flower, Simple, People

  Mary Russell Mitford (1870). “The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Related in a Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends”, p.189, London, R. Bentley

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• The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves . . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Sacrifice, Self, Shrines

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• The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. ... ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure; it supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Art, Self, Skills

  Ada Louise Huxtable (1986). “ARCHITECTURE, ANYONE?”, Random House

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• To long for love, to have experienced passion's deep pleasure, even once, is to understand the mercilessness of having a human body whose memory rides desire's back unanchored from season to season.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Memories, Passion, Long

  Gretel Ehrlich (1992). “Islands, the universe, home”, Penguin Group USA

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• The one pleasure that never palls is the pleasure of not going to church.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Church, Going To Church

  Mary Roberts Rinehart (2013). “The Red Lamp”, p.137, Overamstel Uitgevers

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• the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private, and cannot be communicated to others.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Pain, Reading

  Joyce Carol Oates (1983). “The profane art: essays and reviews”, Dutton Adult

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• In these days people take up with each other and drop each other too easily. Pleasure is practiced like a sport, and the easy game of love leads to the dissolution of the feeling of love.

  Jeanne Moreau

  Sports, Games, People

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• At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us.

  Pauline Kael

  Movie, Real, Order

  Pauline Kael (1994). “For keeps”, E P Dutton

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• I love Death because he breaks the human pattern and frees us from pleasures too prolonged as well as from the pains of this world. It is pleasant, too, to remember that Death lies in our hands; he must come if we call him. ... I think if there were no death, life would be more than flesh and blood could bear.

  Stevie Smith

  Pain, Lying, Thinking

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• Any pleasure that would keep you from Christ is a sinful pleasure that will doubtless cause you anguish, heartache, tears and remorse.

  John R. Rice

  Heartache, Tears, Causes

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• But the true evil of drink lies in the disillusion: that the initial pleasure very soon evaporates, leaving a demoralizing craving for more, which is not even temporarily pleasurable. Which then leads to deterioration of the faculties of both body and mind; plus a bewildering lack of co-operation between the two.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Lying, True Evil, Two

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• The pleasures of intimacy in friendship depend far more on external circumstances than people of a sentimental turn of mind are willing to concede; and when constant companionship ceases to suit the convenience of both parties, the chances are that it will be dropped on the first favourable opportunity.

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Friendship, Party, Opportunity

  Hester Lynch Piozzi (1861). “Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)”, p.100

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• When I read educational articles it often seems to me that this important side of the matter, the purely personal side, is not emphasized enough; the fact that it is so much more agreeable and interesting to be an educated person than not. The sheer pleasure of being educated does not seem to be stressed.

  Edith Hamilton

  Education, Interesting, Stressed

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• Society is the true sphere of human virtue. In social, active life, difficulties will perpetually be met with; restraints of many kinds will be necessary; and studying to behave right in respect of these is a discipline of the human heart, useful to others, and improving to itself. Suffering is no duty, but where it is necessary to avoid guilt, or to do good; nor pleasure a crime, but where it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations, or lessens the generous activity of virtue.

  Elizabeth Carter

  Heart, Discipline, Suffering

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1806). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes ...”, p.259

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• Good doctors get a mechanic's pleasure in making you tick over.

  Margery Allingham

  Doctors, Tick, Mechanic

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