Pleasure

“ I am very fond of pleasure; I will therefore give myself wholly up to gratify my senses, to lead a voluptuous life, to have the spectacle follow the feast, debauchery the spectacle, and so on; but I will never take the least pains to secure that fullness of joy which is at God’s right hand, that river of pleasure whereof he gives to drink to those who put their trust under the shadow of his wings. ”

“ Thus, when pleasure begins from its sweetness to cloy, And the warm heart grows rank like a soil over ripe, We must turn from the earth for some promise of joy, And look up to heaven for a holier type. ”

“ When you speak in this manner we are all amazed, like a pack of blockheads, and you are laughing in your sleeve: for, among all those high-sounding and admirable expressions, pleasure has no place, not only that pleasure which you say consists in motion, and which all men, whether living in cities or in the country, all men, in short, who speak Latin, call pleasure, but even that stationary pleasure, which no one but your sect calls pleasure at all. ”

“ Some would enjoy themselves, some would vow they enjoyed themselves, and some would declare it "a toil of a pleasure," and would drag about on hot and swollen and weary feet, repeating at intervals, "Niver again—niver as long as I live!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While pleasure manifests itself by extravagant gayety, exuberant spirits, and overt acts, happiness retreats to its own proper region, the heart. There concentrating its feelings, it contemplates its treasures, meditates on its enjoyments, and still more fondly on its hopes; counts up its mercies, and feels the consummation of them in looking to the fountain from whence they flow ”

“ He who has not left something sad behind him, and reawoke in the sunshine to feel the golden elixir of health and happiness moving in his veins anew, may take it that he has at least one pleasure yet unspent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think we shall derive some assistance in discussing this question, by attempting to resolve the conception of happiness into its constituent elements.
Pleasure has been defined to consist in the satisfaction of any of man's natural wants. The variety of our pleasures corresponds to the diversity of our wants.
Food to the hungry, rest to the weary, are sources of pleasure. To feel on some cold wintry day the genial warmth of true hearth fire creeping into our blood, and the frozen limbs relaxing their stiffness, is pleasure. All men admire the beautiful and delight in adornment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ See what the excess of pleasure is; the moderate use of it enlightens the eyes, but those that indulge themselves inordinately in the delights of sense have their eyes ready to start out of their heads. ”

“ "I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Forge for ourselves any new form of pleasure.
But what we crave, while it is absent, seems
To excel all things else; then, when ’tis ours,
We crave some other thing, gaping wide-mouthed,
Always possessed by the same thirst of life. ”

“ Sufferings test and awaken generous sentiments; pleasures promote and fortify base instincts. Sufferings arm against pleasure; enjoyment begets weakness in suffering. Pleasure squanders; pain ingarners. Pleasure is man’s rock of peril; the pain of motherhood is woman’s triumph. ”

“ 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 smallest, the most trifling pleasure that is conveniently within my reach, tempts me more than all the joys of paradise. I must except, however, those pleasures which are necessarily followed by pain; I only love those enjoyments which are unadulterated, which can never be the case where we are conscious they must be followed by repentance. ”

“ Are pleasures, as pleasures, distinguishable by anything else than quantity? The pleasure, as such, is not the whole pleasant feeling, not the whole of what is felt. Then we have to ask, Does this ‘what is felt,’ which qualifies the pleasure, and makes it of one sort and not of another, make part of the mere pleasure itself, as pleasure? Or have we to say, Pleasure is itself always one and the same, and differs only in degree; sorts of pleasures are degrees of the same pleasure in reference to sorts of other feelings, which, as such, are not pleasures as such? ”

“ for pleasure always involves the use of one's own powers, and happiness consists in a frequent repetition of pleasure. ”

“ The smallest pleasure, if it be only continuous and make one happy, is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure that comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad interval between ennui, desire, and privation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instead of bowing humbly and openly to the god of enthusiasm, of unreasoned lilt of sentiment and passion, and of the intense delight in all that lives and throbs and vibrates with pleasure and joy; they affect to suppress sentiments, to rein in all pleasures, and to cast a slur on joy. ”

“ Set thy love and hope on what will not pass.
“Bestial pleasure comes from the senses of the flesh; it is diabolic, a thing of arrogance, envy, and deceit; philosophic pleasure is to know the creature; the angelic pleasure is to know and love God.
“When we take our pleasure from that from which brutes draw pleasure—from lust like dogs, or from gluttony like swine—our souls become like theirs. Yet we do not shudder. I had rather have a dog’s body than his soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whenever the pleasure to be derived by an individual comes to him through sympathy and affection and consideration for the feelings of another—that sort of pleasure is so different in its origin and its essence from the pleasure which comes from the gratification of personal appetites and desires that the mass of mankind has recognized the difference since the beginning of civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of you have learnt, I feel sure of it, to feel during these your school days, the satisfaction of living here a true and worthy life; you have tasted of that pleasure which the careless, the indifferent, and the sinful hardly taste at all, the pleasure that dwells with the consciousness of earnest effort and sincere striving after the best things within us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some place the bliss in action, some in ease;
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He then attempts to define pleasure. It is something perfect and complete in itself, at each successive moment of time; hence it is not motion, which is at every moment incomplete. Pleasure is like the act of vision, or a point, or a monad, always complete in itself. ”

“ 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? ”

“ He is even able, through some fine choice of words, to convey to us the precise degree and quality of pleasure which they yield him, and which he wins us to share, not by exhortations or reproaches, but gently, with alluring smiles, and hinted promises of reward. ”

“ Pleasure, both mental and corporeal of every kind, controlled by wisdom, is to be cultivated as the great object of life, and to be measured by judgment, improved and extended by reason and reflection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy." ”

“ Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain,
And this first life claims a second, else I count its good no gain?"—
Much less have I heart to palter when the matter to decide
Now becomes "Was ending ending once and always, when you died?" ”