Pleasure ground

“ What is the origin of pleasure? Her natural seat is the mixed class, in which health and harmony were placed. Pain is the violation, and pleasure the restoration of limit. There is a natural union of finite and infinite, which in hunger, thirst, heat, cold, is impaired—this is painful, but the return to nature, in which the elements are restored to their normal proportions, is pleasant. ”

“ Thus upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. Thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to those appetites to which Nature leads us ”

“ Men and women read, and wanted more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; and many hands were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was of wisdom. In our feverish days it is a sign of health or of convalescence that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that do not rush or roar, but distill as the dew. ”

“ An excellent proof of my proposition, and one very easily encountered, lies in the fact that wherever life is simple and sane, true pleasure accompanies it as fragrance does uncultivated flowers. Be this life hard, hampered, devoid of all things ordinarily [84] considered as the very conditions of pleasure, the rare and delicate plant, joy, flourishes there. ”

“ It is part of my nature that pleasure has an exhilarating effect on me; it leaves sunshine behind, and becomes a part of my inner being. The interval which parts one ecstasy from another is like the short night which marks off our long summer days. ”

“ He supposes an inward harmony, the preservation of which is pleasure, while its disturbance is pain; and as pleasure is always dependent on the activity from which it springs, the more this activity is elevated the purer the pleasure becomes. ”

“ Or, to put it to the common sense of mankind, is the gratification of affection a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pleasure. So that whether the motive which leads us to perform an action is the love of our neighbour, or the love of God, it is undeniable that pleasure enters into that motive. ”

“ Pleasure was one part, pain was another part, and the third part was just nothing—neither pleasure nor pain. The core is where the ache is, the crisp is where the pleasure is, and the skin represents the part which isn't anything. ”

“ No earthly possession was enjoyed merely on account of pleasure, but only as the means of a higher life. They strove after purity in soul and body; tranquillity and seriousness characterised their demeanour. ”

“ What is meant by prejudices?”
“Pleasure is the actual enjoyment of our senses; it is a complete satisfaction given to all our natural and sensual appetites; and, when our worn-out senses want repose, either to have breathing time, or to recover strength, pleasure comes from the imagination, which finds enjoyment in thinking of the happiness afforded by rest. ”

“ The substantial happiness, which enlarges and civilizes the mind, may be compared to the pleasure experienced in roving through nature at large, inhaling the sweet gale natural to the clime; while the reveries of a feverish imagination continually sport themselves in gardens full of aromatic shrubs, which cloy while they delight, and weaken the sense of pleasure they gratify. ”

“ If greatest apparent pleasure—or greatest present pleasure—is by an inexorable law of human nature always sought, how can it be shown that we ought to sacrifice the apparent to the real—the present pleasure that is small to the greater future pleasure? If the individual necessarily pursues his own pleasure, how can we show that he ought to subordinate it to the pleasures of the "greatest number"? ”

“ Does not the charge hold true of the pleasure hunter? As a condiment, as a relaxation, pleasure seeking, if of the right sort, is not only allowable but commendable. He who gave life intended it to be a joy. ”

“ They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. ”

“ As we were giving then a few moments of pause to the delectation of the senses, in dwelling with the highest relish on this intimatest point of re-union, and chewing the cud of enjoyment, the impatience natural to the pleasure soon drove us into action. Then began the driving tumult on his side, and the responsive heaves on mine, which kept me up to him: whilst as our joys grew too mighty for utterance, the organs of our voice, voluptuously intermixing, became organs of the touch: And, oh, that touch, how delicious! ”

“ On the other hand, it seems quite plain, that we do regard as very desirable, many complicated states of mind in which the consciousness of pleasure is combined with consciousness of other things—states which we call ‘enjoyment of’ so and so. ”

“ Far from simple is the commonest of our pleasures, but a layer, infinitely multiple, of myriads of millions of ancestral impressions. Try to analyze the sensation of pleasure in a sunrise, or the smell of hay, and how soon we are lost. ”

“ Pleasure, a life of pleasure.... Other lives, to be livable, must contain more pleasure than pain; and we know, as a fact, that all healthy work is pleasurable to healthy creatures. Intelligent converse with one's friends, study, sympathy, all give pleasure; and art is, in a way, the very type of pleasure. Yet we know that none of all that is meant in the expression: a life of pleasure. ”

“ Thus the magic effect of contrasted emotions suggests why pleasure alternating with woe in Love is more intense than pleasure uninterrupted. A mountaineer who has been wading through snowfields all day up to his knees enjoys the comforts of his slippers, a bright fire, and a cup of tea in the evening, twice as much as a man who has been all day at home. ”

“ You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. ”

“ Now I am not prepared to deny that there is some universal relation between pleasure and desire; but I hope to shew, that, if there is, it is of such sort as will rather make against than for Hedonism. It is urged that pleasure is always the object of desire, and I am ready to admit that pleasure is always, in part at least, the cause of desire. ”

“ If one pleasure can differ from another in quality, that means, that a pleasure is something complex, something composed, in fact, of pleasure in addition to that which produces pleasure. For instance, Mill speaks of ‘sensual indulgences’ as ‘lower pleasures.’ But what is a sensual indulgence? ”

“ Those pleasures, which arise from agitation, are not to be pursued as in themselves the end of living, but as means of arriving at that stable tranquillity, in which true happiness consists. It is the office of reason to confine the pursuit of pleasure within the limits of nature, in order to the attainment of that happy state, in which the body is free from every kind of pain, and the mind from all perturbation. ”

“ The task is, to rise above both pain and pleasure and unite them to our service. "Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained. ”

“ The activity thus assumed as independent of feeling is nevertheless accompanied with feeling, and that feeling is essentially pleasurable: the pleasure being greatest at first. The presence of pleasure is the standing motive to action; and all the natural activity of the system—whether muscular or nervous—brings an effluence of pleasure, until a certain point of depletion is arrived at. ”

“ Can it really be said that we value pleasure, except in so far as we are conscious of it? Should we think that the attainment of pleasure, of which we never were and never could be conscious, was something to be aimed at for its own sake? It may be impossible that such pleasure should ever exist, that it should ever be thus divorced from consciousness ”

“ If there is no pleasure in the world except that which we experience in the gratification of our physical desires—eating, drinking, gay associations, and the pleasures of the world—then the enjoyments of the world are bubbles, there is nothing in them, there is no lasting benefit or happiness to be derived from them.—Deseret Weekly News, Vol. ”

“ For we are not at present pursuing that pleasure alone which moves nature itself by a certain sweetness, and which is perceived by the senses with a certain pleasurable feeling; but we consider that the greatest of all pleasures which is felt when all pain is removed. For since, when we are free from pain, we rejoice in that very freedom itself, and in the absence of all annoyance,—but everything which is a cause of our rejoicing is pleasure, just as everything that gives us offence is pain,—accordingly, the absence of all pain is rightly denominated pleasure. ”

“ To do something, say something, see something, before any body else—these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. ”

“ Our Beneficent acts are either causes of pleasure to others immediately, or causes of the causes of their pleasures. The act of him who gives a cup of water to the thirsty traveller in the Desert, may be said to be cause of the pleasure of the Traveller. The act of him who instructs the Traveller, before he proceeds on his journey, where in the Desert water is to be found, is the cause of the cause of his Pleasure. ”

“ In adults, the pleasures of mere colours are very languid in comparison of their present aggregates of pleasure, formed by association. And thus the eye approaches more and more, as we advance in spirituality and perfection, to an inlet for mental pleasure, and an organ suited to the exigencies of a being, whose happiness consists in the improvement of his understanding and affections. ”

“ The essential elements of pleasure and enjoyment—high and gay spirits, good-nature, with a desire to please and be pleased, where everybody was at their best, and where was a large infusion of good breeding—were present, and a general good time was the logical result. ”

“ How should he withstand the passionate crying of the flesh or believe that through pleasure comes satiety and the loss of that in the spirit whereby alone pleasure can be enjoyed? For his gift was that he could win all hearts. ”

“ The answer is: "Pleasure belongs to the Self as a whole. Where the vehicles yield themselves to the Self, and permit it to 'expand' as is its eternal nature, then what is called pleasure is felt." It has been rightly said: "Pleasure is a sense of moreness." ”

“ The faculties from which we are capable of these pleasures, and the pleasures themselves, are as natural, and as much to be accounted for, as any sensual appetite whatever, and the pleasure from its gratification. ”

“ But, conveyed as ideal and generic, they produce this supernatural pleasure or happiness, which is not to be compared with normal pleasure, just as the joy of the contemplation of the absolute is not to be described as pleasure in the ordinary sense. ”

“ Then, in this ascending evolution, pleasure appears attached to pure representations. This—as in the case of pain—is the main group, that of the varied and numerous joys which console humanity for its sufferings; these, too, are divided into egoistic and sympathetic pleasures. There remain the highest and rarest manifestations attached to pure concepts—the pleasures of æsthetic creation, those of the metaphysician or the man of science. ”

“ We doubtless regard them with pleasure, with greater pleasure, perhaps, because, in the midst of a place ungenial to them, they remind us of the distant spots on which they flourish in spontaneous exuberance. ”

“ We have provided for our comforts; let us now attend to our happiness;—let each man sedulously nurture those faculties of pleasure which exist both for himself and others. It is the mental world that now requires discovery and cultivation. ”

“ The image of the past pleasure being strong and violent, bestows these qualities on the idea of the future pleasure, which is connected with it by the relation of resemblance. A pleasure, which is suitable to the way of life, in which we are engag'd, excites more our desires and appetites than another, which is foreign to it. ”

“ That pleasure is the first good, appears from the inclination which every animal, from its first birth, discovers to pursue pleasure, and avoid pain; and is confirmed by the universal experience of mankind, who are incited to action by no other principle than the desire of avoiding pain, or obtaining pleasure. ”

“ The homes where material pleasures abound are the ones where worry, neurasthenia and nervous prostration abound.
Material pleasures are merely stimulants for the time being, and there always come the intermittent reflexes of gloom and depression. [Pg 67]
The desire to show off, to excite envy in others, is always present at the homes where material pleasures are the rule.
Material pleasures call for crowds. Mental pleasures are best enjoyed in solitude.
The material pleasure-seeker lives a life of convention, engagements, routine, strain, and high tension. ”