The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
A fool bolts pleasure, then complains of moral indigestion.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.
Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.
It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. [Proverbs 9:17]
— Bible
He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.
— Bible
Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.
Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.
For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.
The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.
For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.
To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.
There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
Whenever I meet with anything agreeable in this world it surprises me so much -- and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested in one way or the other) that I go on wondering for a week to come.
Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions.
Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.
In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.
Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in frame, unlimited in space and indefinite in duration.
Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.
As clouds are blown away by the wind, the thirst for material pleasures will be driven away by the utterance of the Lord's name.
Pleasure is none, if not diversified.
The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.
Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave.
I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.
We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant.
Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us -- of becoming happy -- is not attainable: yet we may not -- nay, cannot -- give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.
Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.
Pleasure is sweeter as recreation than as a business.
Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that --one is sure to get into some mess before evening.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them and they make us despair in losing them.
He is incapable of truly good action who finds not a pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others.
God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
Pleasure that isn't paid for is as insipid as everything else that's free.
Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation; not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.
Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
It's true Heaven forbids some pleasures, but a compromise can usually be found.
— Moliere
Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.
I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.
The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.
We tire of those pleasures we take, but never of those we give.
Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.
— Plato
People have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.
Short lived pleasure is the parent of pain.
— Proverb
When pleasure interferes with business, give up business.
Pleasure for one hour, a bottle of wine. Pleasure for one year a marriage; but pleasure for a lifetime, a garden.
Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
You are quaffing drink from a hundred fountains: whenever any of these hundred yields less, your pleasure is diminished. But when the sublime fountain gushes from within you, no longer need you steal from the other fountains.
Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit.
Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
— Seneca
So enjoy present pleasures as to not mar those to come.
— Seneca
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
The eruption of lived pleasure is such that in losing myself I find myself; forgetting that I exist, I realize myself.
Everyone is dragged on by their favorite pleasure.
— Virgil
Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
— Voltaire
Work is often the father of pleasure.
— Voltaire
The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.
Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.
A young man of pleasure is a man of pains.
— Young