Pleasure Quotes - Page 35

• There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues madethem great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.

  Herman Melville

  Taken, Humility, Greatness

  Herman Melville (2001). “Tales, Poems, and Other Writings”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pleasure usually comes when called, but not happiness.

  Mason Cooley

  Happiness

  4 Copy quote

• I am invigorated by work, wasted by pleasure.

  Mason Cooley

  Work

  5 Copy quote

• Work saves us from melancholy. Pleasure exposes us to it.

  Mason Cooley

  Work, Melancholy

  5 Copy quote

• The perfect pleasure: money is neither fattening nor immoral nor illegal.

  Mason Cooley

  Money, Perfect, Illegal

  4 Copy quote

• Each say following another, either hastening or putting off our death--what pleasure does it bring? I count that man worthless whois cheered by empty hopes. No, a noble man must either live or die well.

  Sophocles

  Hope, Men, Noble Man

  7 Copy quote

• The joy that comes past hope and beyond expectation is like no other pleasure in extent.

  Sophocles

  Past, Expectations, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Poetry, Virtue

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.48, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• They are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don't expect you to listen.... It's the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Country, People, Secret

  Evelyn Waugh (1958). “The world of Evelyn Waugh”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.

  Blaise Pascal

  Death, Real, Vanity

  4 Copy quote

• Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.

  Blaise Pascal

  Pain, Reflection, Self

  10 Copy quote

• Feed him ye must, whose food fills you.
  And that this pleasure is like raine,
  Not sent ye for to drowne your paine,
  But for to make it spring againe.

  Robert Herrick

  Spring, Eating, Paine

  Robert Herrick (1844). “Hesperides Or Works Both Human and Divine”, p.39

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fortune, honour, beauty, youth,
  Are but blossoms dying;
  Wanton pleasures, doting love,
  Are but shadows flying.

  Thomas Campion

  Flying, Shadow, Dying

  Joseph Haslewood, Edmund Bolton, Thomas Campion, George Gascoigne, Samuel Daniel (1815). “Ancient critical essays upon English poets and poesy”, p.14

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire . . .

  Socrates

  Inspire, Desire, Judgment

  30 Copy quote

• ... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.

  Gertrude Stein

  War, History, Done

  Gertrude Stein (2013). “Wars I Have Seen”, p.84, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.

  Stendhal

  Ambition, Power, Men

  8 Copy quote

• There is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure--yet the converse of the proposition will not hold true.--We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other.

  Laurence Sterne

  Happiness, Gleam, Taste

  Laurence Sterne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Two children, all alone and no one by,
  Holding their tattered frocks, thro'an airy maze
  Of motion lightly threaded with nimble feet
  Dance sedately; face to face they gaze,
  Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.

  Laurence Binyon

  Children, Eye, Two

  Laurence Binyon (1926). “Laurence Binyon”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Salvation, O the joyful sound!
  'Tis pleasure to our ears;
  A sov'reign balm for ev'ry wound,
  A cordial for our fears.

  Isaac Watts

  Sound, Ears, Reign

  Isaac Watts (1813). “The Works of the Rev. Isaac Watts D.D. in Nine Volumes”, p.180

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now shall my inward joys arise,
  And burst into a song;
  Almighty love inspires my heart,
  And pleasure tunes my tongue.

  Isaac Watts

  Song, Heart, Joy

  Isaac Watts (1832). “An Arrangement of the Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Rev. Isaac Watts”, p.111

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is a taste for prostitution. In fact, there is no noble pleasure that cannot be reduced to Prostitution.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love, Noble, Taste

  7 Copy quote

• The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Hanging On, Taste, Salvation

  11 Copy quote

• It is the pleasure of astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished by them.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Proud, Satisfaction, Astonishing

  6 Copy quote

• Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.

  Epicurus

  Pain, Choices, Soul

  104 Copy quote

• When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the profligate or that which depends on physical enjoyment--as some think who do not understand our teachings, disagree with them, or give them an evil interpretation--but by pleasure we mean the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety.

  Epicurus

  Pain, Teaching, Mean

  Epicurus (1964). “Letters: Principles Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings Translated, with an Introd. and Notes, by Russel M. Geor. Indianapolis Merrill”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source