Pleasure

"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata? ... It is the Noble Eightfold Path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

"Pleasant feeling is impermanent, conditioned, dependently-arisen, bound to decay, to vanish, to fade away, to cease—and so too are painful feeling and neutral feeling. So anyone who, on experiencing a pleasant feeling, thinks: "This is my self", must, at the cessation of that pleasant feeling, think: "My self has gone!""

"Doubtless the pleasure is as great Of being cheated as to cheat."

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes By the deep Sea, and music in its roar."

"Study to sever pleasure from vice."

"Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure, Sweet is pleasure after pain."

"No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves."

"There are two kinds of pleasure: one consisting in a state of rest, in which both body and mind are undisturbed by any kind of pain; the other arising from an agreeable agitation of the senses, producing a correspondent emotion in the soul. It is upon the former of these that the enjoyment of life chiefly depends."

"Pleasure, or pain, is not only good, or evil, in itself, but the measure of what is good or evil, in every object of desire or aversion; for the ultimate reason why we pursue one thing, and avoid another, is because we expect pleasure from the former, and apprehend pain from the latter. If we sometimes decline a present pleasure, it is not because we are averse to pleasure itself, but because we conceive, that in the present instance, it will be necessarily connected with a greater pain. In like manner, if we sometimes voluntarily submit to a present pain, it is because we judge that it is necessarily connected with a greater pleasure."

"Those views of life which deify pleasure are less likely to yield it."

"Look upon that hour-marked round, Listen to that fateful sound ; There my silent hand is stealing. My more silent course revealing ; Wild, devoted Pleasure, hear, — Stay thee on thy mad career !"

"Like the cards which form a child's plaything palace, our pleasures are nicely balanced one upon the other."

"He had been used to that greatest of mental pleasures — to have his thoughts often divined — always entered into."

"We thus derive that the essence of a man's existence in this world is solely the fulfilling of mitzvoth, the serving of God and the withstanding of trials, and that the world's pleasures should serve only the purpose of aiding and assisting him, by way of providing him with the contentment and peace of mind requisite for the freeing of his heart for the service which devolves upon him."

"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."

"Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years, One minute of Heaven is worth them all."

"It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it."

"The road that leads to pleasure is downhill and very easy, with the result that one does not walk but is dragged along; the other which leads to self-control is uphill, toilsome no doubt but profitable exceedingly. The one carries us away, forced lower and lower as it drives us down its steep incline, till it flings us off on to the level ground at its foot; the other leads heavenwards the immortal who have not fainted on the way and have had the strength to endure the roughness of the hard ascent."

"κακοῦ δέλεαρ"

"Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; And when in act they cease, in prospect rise."

"Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence."

"Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power."

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."

"Boys who, being mature in knowledge, Pawn their experience to their present pleasure."

"And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine."