Quotes on Pleasure

Love! What is love? It's nothing. It's just a word. It doesn't exist. Only pleasure is important.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they already knew that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken.

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.

Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!

I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.

One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.

When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.

We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures of Eating)

Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.

Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.

Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.

Those whose work and pleasure are one... are... Fortune's favoured children.

‎Who would die for this chance to be fed this death of pleasure with spoons, in their warm homes, alone, unmoving?

For pleasure has no relish unless we share it.