Pleasure Quotes - Page 34

• ... it would be impossible for women to stand in higher estimation than they do here. The deference that is paid to them at all times and in all places has often occasioned me as much surprise as pleasure.

  Frances Wright

  Would Be, Impossible, Surprise

  Frances Wright (1821). “Views of society and manners in America: in a series of letters from that country to a friend in England, during the years 1818, 1819, and 1820”, p.312

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• You think you can marry for your own pleasure, friend?

  Moliere

  Family, Marriage, Thinking

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• New-born desires, after all, have inexplicable charms, and all the pleasure of love is in variety.

  Moliere

  Love, Desire, Seduction

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• Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Nature, Fall

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1042, Delphi Classics

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• I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Book, Men, Wife

  Pearl S. Buck (2013). “My Several Worlds: A Personal Record”, p.302, Open Road Media

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• For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

  Honore de Balzac

  Pain, Shadow, World

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.39, The Floating Press

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• Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life's duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mother, Children, Character

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.186, The Floating Press

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• I was elected a Captain of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Volunteer, Captains, Autobiography

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.50, Fordham Univ Press

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• Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.

  Joseph Addison

  Work, Luxury, Way

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.65

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• One half of the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially from his belief in their sympathy with him.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Theatre, Acting, Half

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.2179, Delphi Classics

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• To see distinctly the machinery--the wheels and pinions--of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Art, Wheels, Able

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.2118, Delphi Classics

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• my pleasure
  was in the strength of my back,
  in my noble shoulders, the cool
  smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.

  Denise Levertov

  Dream, Noble, Flesh

  Denise Levertov (1967). “The Sorrow Dance: Poems”, [New York] : New Directions

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• I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wise, Wisdom, Children

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.57, Modern Library

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• I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].

  Thomas Jefferson

  Paris, Independence, Savages

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.63, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The Heart asks Pleasure--first--
  And then--Excuse from Pain

  Emily Dickinson

  Pain, Heart, Firsts

  Emily Dickinson (2016). “The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.11, First Avenue Editions

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• For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Islands, Race, Blood

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• We take no pleasure in permitted joys,
  But what's forbidden is more keenly sought.

  Ovid

  Joy, Forbidden

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• There is no pleasure pure and simple, and some care always
  comes to mar our joys.

  Ovid

  Simple, Joy, Mars

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• To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.

  Samuel Johnson

  Friendship, Years, Long

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1888). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Together with A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”

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• The artist isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done, as you call it. He gets his pleasure out of doing it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you like. The mere completion of it is an incident.

  William McFee

  Art, Done, Incidents

  William McFee (1921). “Harbours of Memory”

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• The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime.

  James Joyce

  Love, Life, Fleeting

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.1353, Delphi Classics

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• If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
  One cordial in this melancholy vale,
  'T is when a youthful, loving, modest pair
  In other's arms breathe out the tender tale

  Robert Burns

  Heaven, Arms, Pairs

  Robert Burns, Robert Chambers (1838). “The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. To which are Now Added, Notes Illustrating Historical, Personal, and Local Allusions. [The Editor's Preface Signed: R. C., I.e. Robert Chambers.]”, p.42

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• If rich men would remember that shrouds have no pockets, they would, while living, share their wealth with their children, and give for the good of others, and so know the highest pleasure wealth can give.

  Tryon Edwards

  Children, Men, Giving

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.1493, Ravenio Books

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• The pleasure of leaving home, care-free, with no concern but to enjoy, has also as a pendant the pleasure of coming back to the old hearthstone, the home to which, however traveled, the heart still fondly turns, ignoring the burden of its anxieties and cares.

  Herman Melville

  Travel, Home, Heart

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.422, Northwestern University Press

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• Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?

  Herman Melville

  Pain, Men, People

  Herman Melville (2016). “Redburn.His First Voyage”, p.208, Herman Melville

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