PLEASURE

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

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that --one is sure to get into some mess before evening.
John Keats

God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.
C. S. Lewis

You are quaffing drink from a hundred fountains: whenever any of these hundred yields less, your pleasure is diminished. But when the sublime fountain gushes from within you, no longer need you steal from the other fountains.
Jalal-Uddin Rumi

A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Pleasure is sweeter as recreation than as a business.
Raymond Hitchcock

Work is often the father of pleasure.
Voltaire

To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.
Blaise Pascal

He is incapable of truly good action who finds not a pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others.
Johann Kaspar Lavater

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.
Rainer Maria Rilke

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
Arnold Bennett

We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant.
Albert Einstein

Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

Everyone is dragged on by their favorite pleasure.
Virgil

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
Thomas A. Edison

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
John D. Rockefeller

Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.
Douglas William Jerrold

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. [Proverbs 9:17]
Bible

As clouds are blown away by the wind, the thirst for material pleasures will be driven away by the utterance of the Lord's name.
Sri Sarada Devi

So enjoy present pleasures as to not mar those to come.
Seneca

When pleasure interferes with business, give up business.
American Proverbs

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
H. L. Mencken

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
H. L. Mencken

Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.
Roland Barthes

Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit.
John Selden

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.
Nathaniel Branden

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them and they make us despair in losing them.
Madame De Lambert

Short lived pleasure is the parent of pain.
Proverbs

Pleasure for one hour, a bottle of wine. Pleasure for one year a marriage; but pleasure for a lifetime, a garden.
Chinese Proverbs

There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
Lord Byron

Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
Voltaire

Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave.
Augustine J. Duganne

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
Oscar Wilde

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.
Plato

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Harold J. Smith

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.
Marcus T. Cicero

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

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.
Josh Billings

The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that 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

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
Mary Little

He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.
Bible

Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.
Oliver Goldsmith

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Samuel Johnson

Whenever I meet with anything agreeable in this world it surprises me so much -- and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested in one way or the other) that I go on wondering for a week to come.
Lord Byron

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.
Samuel Butler