I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they’re outside of time, are the only ones with time. After the last rereading (just now), I realize that time isn’t the only thing that matters,...

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

we not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particularway in which we have been accustomed to be pleased.

The stoic contemplates fallen leaves; the epicure rakes them into a loveseat.

Imagine a pleasure in which the moment of satisfaction is simultaneous with the moment of destruction: to kiss is to poison; lifting to your lips this face after which you have ached, dreamed, longed for,...

Epicurus said you should live for pleasure – adding that nothing brings more pleasure than a little sun and a glass of water. It is on this principle that our conjugal existence has rested for...

Above Constance’s desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob’s viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men...

Say my name again. Not in anger, or disgust, but as you did just now. As if I am the only man in the world who can satisfy you.~Liam C.

I feel virtuous because my soul is at ease.

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?

The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.

Each indulgence in pleasure is an appointment made with misery.

Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes? Because peace had been without thought? Without…integrity?How could she have felt like that without love?Was love essential?Did it even exist – the...

Let an illness, a duel, a runaway horse make us see death face to face, and how richly we should have enjoyed the life of pleasure, the travels in unknown lands, which are about to...

I was a married woman! she said. Why does every generation believe it is the discoverer of pleasure? Your father was a spectacular lover. Even through the wall, I could hear the triumph in her...

There are men who have themselves whipped simply to increase their sexual pleasure. These, in contrast with true masochists, regard flagellation as a means to an end.

There are many stories and accounts about the winners of lotteries whoare jubilant when they win, but whose lives descend into a nightmareafter acquiring that unearned money. (No challenge, no skill.) Thelottery looks like “the...

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Sure, I eat because I have to. But I also eat because I want to. It is one of life’s few pleasures.

Scandaliser est un droit. Être scandalisé est un plaisir.

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the nature of...

If you would really study my pleasure, mother, you must consider your own comfort and convenience a little more than you do.

They had set forth to rid their town of evil and had managed to rid it of pleasure as well.

Until-as often happened during those first months travel, whenever I would feel such happiness-my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband’s voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up...

I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives...

Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something’s gonna get...

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a...

There had been an attempt to humiliate him. It had not succeeded. He had paid, but pain, like pleasure, has no duration. Pride was an entity more persistent.

People don’t think when they’re enjoying themselves. Thinking is a sign of disturbance.

You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.

When a woman is romantically subdued, all she does at that moment is under the influence of her desires.

Longing, whether for a passion or person, is one of the most powerful, yet painful, emotions there is. It can drive you to its source under the most extreme conditions, or it can cripple you...

Somewhere I’d heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the...

When enough is not enough, a Hedonist is born.

Would you agree,” he said, “that man’s sole duty is to produce as much pleasure as possible?””Only if the pleasure produced is equivalent to the diminution of pain.” My father crossed his arms. “And only...

when we will unmake this world in which we are battered between long burden and brief delight, and will live in pleasure for all our days.” The belief in the possibility of long-lasting, high-flown pleasures...

Love can be simply stated to be the desire of the human being to integrate oneself with other selves in such a way that one starts feeling the pain and pleasure of another person as...

I write everything in Courier 12 because I write for publication, not pleasure.

If [a man] spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the...

An imagined pleasure is never really the pleasure, but an imagined pain, in a very real sense, is the pain, because so much of pain is the consciousness of it. It makes itself objective. Whereas...

Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.

The world will lose its treasures if everyone depends on someone to think for him/her! The world will lose its pleasures if everyone depends on someone to make him/her happy!

I wish somebody would combine tasers and dildos, and test the devices out on all the politicians in Washington DC. Well, all the politicians except Barney Frank, who’d actually derive pleasure from the experiment.

‎Pleasure is wild and sweet. She likes purple flowers. She loves the sun and the wind and the night sky. She carries a silver bowl full of liquid moonlight. She has a cat named Midnight...

But it turns out Joy is a house built from the same bricks as Sorrow. Pleasure is a poem, and it uses the same words as Pain.

Freedom, where are you? Who holds you back? […] The mother of wit and pleasure, Oh freedom!

We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course of our existence.

Sometimes we just go for our own pleasure.