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Pleasure Quotes

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Pleasure Quotes

“When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, exploring and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called “licking the earth.”

“What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external to our sleeping selves? Not pleasure - it is much too broad and narrow, - Not sex, not for the moment love, but pride, And not in prowess, but pride undefined, Autonomous in its unthought demands, A bit of vanity, but mostly pride.”

Self Moments Names Sex Bits Sleep Pleasure Pride Demand Vanity Demon Broads Autonomous Prowess Undefined

Author:J. V. Cunningham

“Every man is of importance to himself, and, therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing the world already acquainted with his pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or misfortunes which had never been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them will only laugh, for no man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.”

Men World Writing Firsts Pain Pleasure Known Opinion Laughing Sorrow Importance Every Man Vanity Related Injury Misfortunes Publish Supposing

Book:The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical

Source: The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical

“Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.”

Giving Kind Moments Pleasure Accepting Willing Rewards Vanity Sufficient Benevolent Kind Words Idlers Approving

Book:Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country

Source: Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country

“There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues madethem great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.”

World May Certain Lost Natural Pleasure Christianity Virtue Taken Greatness Humility Ancient Noble Vanity Tone Peculiar Heroic Possessed Eastern Majesty Garments Monarchs

Book:Tales, Poems, and Other Writings

Source: Tales, Poems, and Other Writings

“We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.”

Needs Years Mind Real Moments Death Evil Pleasure Forever Infinite Satisfaction Unhappy Vanity Lasting

Author:Blaise Pascal

“I was amongst the virtues like the great Turk in his seraglio of women, and I chose to dwell with that virtue which looked the fairest in my eyes and gave me at that season most pleasure. In short, I made wives of them: I first admired them, then made them my own property, and if they would not submit to my will, I again turned them off and divorced them.”

Ifs Firsts Made Eye My Own Pleasure Virtue Wife Seasons Property Vanity Sexism Submit Divorced

Book:The cry: a new dramatic fable : in two volumes

Source: The cry: a new dramatic fable : in two volumes

“Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).”

Light Pain Evil Pleasure Pure Satisfaction Deeds Punishment Cease Former Vanity Good And Evil Latter Good Deeds Secrecy Disclosure

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet.”

Persons Pain Pleasure Feet Youth Glory Claims Dare Dues Vanity Associates

Author:Francois Fenelon

“There is no lasting pleasure but contemplation; all others grow flat and insipid upon frequent use; and when a man hath run through a set of vanities, in the declension of his age, he knows not what to do with himself, if he cannot think; he saunters about from one dull business to another, to wear out time; and hath no reason to value Life but because he is afraid of death.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Men Reason Use Running Age Values Grows Pleasure Vanity Contemplation Dull No Reason Flats Lasting Afraid Of Death Insipid

Author:Gilbert Burnet

“You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.”

World Book Remember Nations Pleasure Known Drink Ambition Pursuit Vanity Beer Despise Savages Indolence

Book:Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression

Source: Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression

“The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75% of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity, and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense.”

“Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous.”

Source: The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the American Revolution : to which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life