“ Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. ”
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580). copy citation
| Author | Michel de Montaigne |
|---|---|
| Source | The Essays of Michel de Montaigne |
| Topic | pain pleasure |
| Date | 1580 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Charles Cotton |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm |
Context
““And languor, and silence, and sighs, coming from the innermost heart.”—Hor., Epod., xi. 9.]
these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the prints of her teeth.— [Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.]
“Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis .”
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