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Pleasure Quotes

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Pleasure Quotes

“Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose.”

Kind May Doe Feelings Purpose Culture Pleasure Effects Higher Music Is Noble Primaries Appeals Sufficient Latter Instruction Beneficial Refined Crude Transitory Coarse

Book:Works

Source: Works

“The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.”

Real Culture Pleasure Industry Promise Draws Notes Satisfied Consumers Plot Cheat Illusory Menus Diners Staging

Book:Dialectic of Enlightenment

Source: Dialectic of Enlightenment

“human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight.”

Humans Has Beens Seems Suffering Culture Human Beings Pleasure Identity Delight Cultural Identity

Book:Culture and Commitment

Source: Culture and Commitment

“After the pleasure of possessing books there is hardly anything more pleasant than that of speaking of them, and of communicating to the public the innocent richness of thought which we have acquired by the culture of letters.”

Book Culture Pleasure Letters Communicate Innocent Pleasant Richness Possessing

Author:Charles Nodier

“The time has also come to recognize the painful truth that traditional Judeo-Christian moral values of pain and pleasure in human relationships have contributed substantially to child abuse and to the prevalence of physical violence in Western civilization.... The religious system upon which our culture is based holds that pain, suffering and deprivation are moral and necessary to save one's soul and make one a 'good person.' The crucifixion and scourging of Christ are examples.”

“Man... is an inextricable tangle of culture and biology. And not being simple, he is not simply good; he has... a kind of hell within him from which rise everlastingly the impulses which threaten his civilization. He has the faculty of imagining for himself more in the way of pleasure and satisfaction than he can possibly achieve. Everything that he gains he pays for in more than equal coin; compromise and the compounding with defeat constitute his best way of getting through the world. His best qualities are the result of a struggle whose outcome is tragic. Yet he is a creature of love.”

“The basic idea that the purpose of life is to be happy or is to experience the most favorable ratio of pleasure to suffering or productivity to work or gratification to sacrifice or any of that stuff, which, you know, a couple generations ago, to say that kind of stuff would have made you, you know, a freak - a freak and an Epicurean - and now seems to be so much - simply an unquestioned assumption of the culture that we don't really even talk about it anymore.”

“The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness , of fear and pleasure; it's a little like making love, the physical act of love.”

“When artists and philosophers talk only amongst themselves, they ignore the potential of popular culture to become a variety of dialogues with and between everyday people. Its discourse may be productive of desire and pleasure, but popular culture is also a language in which people discuss politics, religion, ethics, and action.”

People May Action Desire Artist Culture Language Pleasure Ethics Everyday Philosopher Dialogue Variety Productive Discourse Popular Culture

Book:Utopian Entrepreneur

Source: Utopian Entrepreneur

“Western civilisation, the élitists all understood, is built upon discrimination: a culture that does not rest on discrimination, that penalises people who discriminate, or rewards the undiscriminating, is worth very little and has only callow, childish pleasures.”

People Littles Doe Culture Pleasure Understood Built Rewards Western Discrimination Civilisation

Author:Richard Davenport-Hines

“Owning things is an obsession in our culture. If we own it, we feel we can control it; and if we control it, we feel it will give us more pleasure. The idea is an illusion.”

Ifs Giving Feels Ideas Culture Pleasure Illusion Obsession

Book:Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline

Source: Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline

“Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.”

Culture Found Grows Chance Pleasure Growing Up Path Flower Seeds Unexpected Sparks Gladness

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler