Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Pleasure

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident." - Charles Lamb

"What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions." - Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"Between hope and fear, love makes her home. She lives on thought, and then she is forgotten, dies. So unlike the pleasure of this world are their foundations." - Ramon Llul, aka Raymond Lully, Raymond Lull, Raimundus, Raymundus Lullus or Lullius

"God has scattered several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all our thoughts." - John Locke

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied... but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." - Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

"Every one may begin a war at his pleasure, but cannot so finish it. A prince, therefore, before engaging in any enterprise, should well measure his strength, and govern himself accordingly." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"To name an object is to deprive a poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-littler guessing game; the ideal is to suggest." - Stephane Mallarme, born Étienne Mallarmé

"Good-fellowship, unflagging, is the prime requisite for success in our society, and the man or woman who smiles only for reasons of humor or pleasure is a deviate." - Marya Mannes

"Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man, nor has one passed away which he is unwilling to remember: the period of his life seems prolonged by his good acts; and we may be said to live twice, when we can reflect with pleasure on the days that are gone." - Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL

"It may be that, while we plodding realists go on, for ever preoccupied with our daily chores, abstracting a microscopic pleasure from each microscopic duty, your true romantic has the truer vision, and beholds, afar off, in all its lurid splendour and terrible proportions, the piquant adventure we call life." - William (Morley Punshon) McFee

"The artist isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done, as you call it. He gets his pleasure out of doing it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you like. The mere completion of it is an incident." - William (Morley Punshon) McFee

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget." - Alfred Mercier

"All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, which deserves that we employ in its pursuit not only time, sweat, trouble, and worldly goods, but even life; inasmuch as without it life comes to be painful and oppressive to us. Pleasure, wisdom, knowledge, and virtue, without it, grow tarnished and vanish away." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Satiety comes of too frequent repetition; and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"The remembrance of pleasure doubles our pain." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Order I a house ought to be like the machinery in opera, whose effect produces great pleasure, but whose ends must be hid." -

"The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"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." - Samuel Pepys

"Our griefs, as well as our joys, owe their strongest colors to our imaginations. There is nothing so grievous to be borne that pondering upon it will not make it heavier; and there is no pleasure so vivid that the animation of fancy cannot enliven it." - Jane Porter

"Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there." - Francis Quarles

"Things temporal are sweeter in the expectation, things eternal are sweeter in the fruition; the first shames thy hope, the second crowns it; it is a vain journey, whose end affords less pleasure than the way." - Francis Quarles

"Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation." - Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds

"What pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from their affluence and luxury, always eat before they are hungry and drink before they are thirsty?" - Samuel Richardson

"A child’s eye, like the sun, never draws water so readily as in the hot temperature of pleasure." -

"The pleasure of love is in loving, and we are made happier by the passion that we experience than by that which we inspire." -

"We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure in appearing so." -

"Marriage is the only thing that affords a woman the pleasure of company and the perfect sensation of solitude at the same" -

"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." -

"If you wish to be like the gods on earth, to be free in the realms of the dead, pluck not the fruit from the garden! In appearance it may glisten to the eye; but the perishable pleasure of possession quickly avenges the curse of curiosity." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

"Pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most." -

"We should cherish old age and enjoy it... Every pleasure defers till its last its greatest delights... How nice it is to have outworn one’s desires and left them behind." -

"The works of a person that builds begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve. In this, planting promises a more lasting pleasure than building; which, were it to remain in equal perfection, would at best begin to moulder and want repairs in imagination. Now trees have a circumstance that suits our taste and that is annual variety." - William Shenstone

"No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure." - Sydney Smith

"Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause." -

"Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it, and leaves the sense of our inability for that we wish, with a disrelish of everything else." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasure activity." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"The kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"I find my joy of living in the fierce and ruthless battles of life, and my pleasure comes from learning something." - Johan August Strindberg

"As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasure contracts." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

"I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

"No civilized man ever regrets a pleasure." -

"Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness." -

"The soul of one who serves God always swims in joy, always keeps a holiday, is always in her palace of jubilation, ever singing with fresh ardor and fresh pleasure a new song of joy and love." - John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”

"The humble soul is a temple of God, a seat of wisdom, a throne of the word, a house of the consoler, a room of the bridegroom, the receiver of the covenant, a golden throne of grace, a tabernacle of holiness, a place of holy peace, a paradise of pleasure, a closed garden, a sealed fountain, a heavenly dwelling place." - Johann Arndt

"A goal-oriented life locates the purposed of life in the achievement of a goal, which is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time… But we also exist across time, and when our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life… Moments slip away and so if life’s purpose is tied to moments. Although moments can play a part, in order to find a purpose which is truly fulfilling, we also need to find a way of living which is worthwhile in itself. Life is rarely an undiluted pleasure that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being." - Julian Baggini

"If the meaning of life is not a mystery, if leading meaningful lives is within the power of all of us, then we do not need to ask the question `What’s it all about?’ in despair. We can look around us and see the many ways in which life can be meaningful. We can see the value of happiness while accepting that it is not everything, which will make it easier for us at those times when it eludes us. We can learn to appreciate the pleasure of life without becoming slaves to appetites which can never be satisfied. We can see the value of success, while not interpreting that too narrowly, so that we can appreciate the project of striving to become what we want to be as well as the more visible, public signs of success. We can see the value of seizing the day, without leading us into a desperate scramble to grasp the ungraspable moment. We can appreciate the value in helping others lead meaningful lives, too, without thinking that altruism demands everything we have. And finally, we can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator to do anything at all." - Julian Baggini

"Always in everything let there be reverence; with the deportment grave as when one is thinking (deeply), and with speech composed and definite. This will make the people tranquil. Pride should not be allowed to grow; the desires should not be indulged; the will should not be gratified to the full; pleasure should not be carried to excess." - Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL