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Pleasure

  • Pleasure is like a cordial — a little of it is not injurious, but too much destroys.

  • These were the things he enjoyed: an unexpected face, the feel of a glass in his hand, low-voiced confidences that went on until dawn and were succeeded by exhaustion.

  • Looking for pleasure is the best way to ensure you won't find it.

  • One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

  • Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself.

  • Business was his aversion; pleasure was his business.

  • While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

  • It is in his pleasures that a man really lives, it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

  • Marred pleasure's best, shadow makes the sun strong.

    • Stevie Smith,
    • "The Queen and the Young Princess," Not Waving But Drowning ()
  • ... to enjoy yourself is the easy method to give enjoyment to others ...

  • They exchanged one or two universal if minor truths — pleasure was so often more exhausting than the hardest work ...

  • I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that is it too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure as a test of value.

  • ... all pleasures should be taken in great leisure and are worth going into in detail; love is not like eating a quick lunch with one's hat on.

  • ... we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.

  • Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

  • Pleasure is by much the most laborious trade I know, especially for those who have not a vocation to it.

  • Instant gratification takes too long.

  • Good times are always mutual; that is what makes good times.

    • Emily Dickinson,
    • 1876, in Martha Dickinson Bianchi, ed., The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson ()
  • Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold.

  • We should lay in a store of food, but never of pleasures; these should be gathered day by day.

  • Pleasure for others is the only pleasure possible to me. I assure you I'm quite selfish! — I'm greedy for the happiness of those I love — and if they can't or won't be happy I'm perfectly miserable.

  • ... just because something is fun doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

  • There is no pleasure without fatigue and that of the eye, if it is prolonged, is particularly dispiriting.

    • Colette,
    • "Silks" (1928), Journey for Myself ()
  • The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.

  • Pleasure is a sensation. It is written into our bodies; it is our experience of delight, of joy. ... Pleasure will become a marker, a compass pointing to emotional true north.

  • Pleasure that isn't paid for is as insipid as everything else that's free.

  • Nothing is our own: we hold our pleasures / Just a little while, ere they are fled: / One by one life robs us of our treasures: / Nothing is our own except our Dead.

  • God made all pleasures innocent.

  • One always finds time for what one likes.

  • Pleasure and pain, the good and the bad, are so intermixed that we can not shun the one without depriving ourselves of the other.