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.

Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Pleasure is a river running to the sea; happiness is the full, calm sea.

Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name--

I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low:

Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.

The highest pleasure is only consciousness of freedom from the deepest pain.

How much pleasure will you allow yourself? Many people have an invisible quota in their minds for the amount of joy they will permit themselves to experience. They become so busy living life that they view pleasure as a luxury they simply do not have time for. Things like lovemaking or playing take a backseat to the everyday motions of living. However, your life simply will not work as well when you deny yourself pleasure. The old adage of all work and no play making you dull is quite true; you may find yourself living a rather colorless life if you do not pause every now and then to indulge your senses. Pleasure is like the oil that keeps the machine of your life running smoothly. Without it, the gears stick and you will most likely break down.

If pleasure is what you want, do not suppress the desire. Seek it intelligently.

The excess if delight palls our appetites rather than pleases.

What is painful in pleasure? It is that in all pleasure a person desires eternity, but knows that pleasure is transient and will end. That is not a knowing that comes from a prior knowledge now applied to every pleasurable event; it is something that the depth of pleasure itself discloses to us if we listen to it: a thirst, a craving, for eternity, precisely because pleasure is not eternal but instead has fallen prey to death. On the other hand we ask: What pleasure is there in pain? It is that in the depth of pain a person feels pleasure in transience, pleasure in the obliteration of apparently endless pain, pleasure in death.

Whate'er the motive, pleasure is the mark.

Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.

Pleasure is not an epiphenomenon, a lucky happenstance of neurons being in the right place and firing at the right time. It has evolved to serve a very specific and adaptive set of functions from our distant past. The genes that encourage the expression and feeling of pleasure are success stories of natural selection--they are still around. Therefore, in our quest to understand the psychological, biological, and cultural foundations of pleasure in the modern world, we must consider what problems pleasure solved for our ancestors. If the pleasures did not provide a functional solution to some selection factors faced by our earlier brethren, the genes that shape their expression and feeling would be long gone, into the dustbin of ecological time like most others.

The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man--and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness--serves as an automatic guardian of the organism's life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body.

He that would have the perfection of pleasure, must be moderate in the use of it.

Oh righteous doom, that they who make

Pleasure their only end,

Ordering the whole life for its sake,

Miss that whereto they tend.

While they who bid stern duty lead,

Content to follow, they,

Of duty only taking heed,

Find pleasure by the way.

I have gone as far as one can go in this life, man or beast. I hunger for nothing any longer. Repetition only extinguishes pleasure.

Your body can be one of the greatest sources of pleasure when you open your five senses fully and experience the physical wonder of being alive. Pleasure can come in the form of sight, like when you see a magnificent sunset, or taste, like when you eat a favorite food. It can come as a glorious musical sound or the soft touch of a lover. The only secret to learning the lesson of pleasure is to make time and space for it in your life.

Yet, sluggard, wake, and gull thy soul no more

With earth's false pleasures, and the world's delight,

Whose fruit is fair and pleasing to the sight,

But sour in taste, false as the putrid core:

Thy flaring glass is gems at her half light;

She makes thee seeming rich, but truly poor:

She boasts a kernel, and bestows a shell;

Performs an inch of her fair-promis'd ell:

Her words protest a heav'n; her works produce a hell.

The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.

Passing pleasures do but cloy,

And ape the consciousness of joy:

The wine, the women, and the song,

That tempt us here by night,

Are happy things, though not for long,

To wing oblivious flight

Above the dull, resenting pain,

That, waking, seizes on the brain,

And gives the moody fibre food

To mope, or captiously to brood,

With swollen eyes and torpid legs,

O'er foul and discontented dregs.

Ah! the quiet that did pall

Before I drank indulgence blind

Becomes the panacea in all

I seek, yet, seeking, cannot find.

Back to Pleasure Quotes