Eat at pleasure,
Drink in measure. [ Proverb ]
Bread at pleasure,
Drink by measure. [ Proverb ]
Pain past is pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Labour itself is a pleasure. [ Motto ]
Great pleasures are serious. [ Voltaire ]
Hours of pleasure are short. [ Proverb ]
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain. [ John Dryden ]
Books are a languid pleasure. [ Montaigne ]
God made all pleasures innocent. [ Mrs. Norton ]
Happiness is unrepented pleasure. [ Socrates ]
A short pleasure, a long penance. [ French ]
O music, sphere descended maid,
Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid. [ Collins ]
Art is pleasure, even in old age. [ E. Quellin ]
Pleasure tastes well after service. [ Proverb ]
Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave. [ Duganne ]
Even pleasure cloys without variety. [ Ovid ]
A man of pleasure is a man of pains. [ Young ]
O! the gallant fisher's life.
It is the best of any:
'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife
And 'tis beloved by many.
Other joys
Are but toys;
Only this,
Lawful is;
For our skill
Breeds no ill,
But content and pleasure. [ Izaak Walton ]
Hunting has as much pain as pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Pleasure is the reward of moderation.
How exquisite is pleasure after pain! [ Young ]
What is a gentleman but his pleasure? [ Proverb ]
Pain is more affecting than pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again. [ Browning ]
Not the poet in the moment
Fancy lightens on his e'e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gies to me. [ Burns ]
Novelty is the storehouse of pleasure. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]
Labor is often the father of pleasure. [ Voltaire ]
The greatest pleasure of life is love. [ Sir W. Temple ]
Fly the pleasure that bites to-morrow. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Moderation is the pleasure of the wise. [ Voltaire ]
Most pleasures embrace but to strangle. [ Montaigne ]
Wouldst thou wisely, and with pleasure,
Pass the days of life's short measure,
From the slow one counsel take,
But a tool of him never make;
Ne'er as friend the swift one know,
Nor the constant one as foe. [ Schiller ]
Nor love, nor honor, wealth, nor power,
Can give the heart a cheerful hour
When health is lost. Be timely wise;
With health all taste of pleasure flies. [ Gay ]
The shortest pleasures are the sweetest. [ Farquhar ]
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. [ Milton ]
Remorse, the fatal egg by pleasure laid. [ Cowper ]
Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad. [ Victor Hugo ]
A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame. [ Pope ]
Novelty is the great parent of pleasure. [ South ]
Pleasure purchased by pain is injurious. [ Horace ]
Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies. [ Burke ]
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. [ Pope ]
Necessity, not pleasure, brings him here. [ Dante ]
There is a pleasure that is born of pain. [ Owen Meredith ]
Their chief pleasure is being displeased. [ Whipple ]
Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom. [ Montaigne ]
Rare indulgence produces greater pleasure. [ Juvenal ]
Sweet sleep be with us, one and all!
And if upon its stillness fall
The visions of a busy brain.
We'll have our pleasure over again.
To warm the heart, to charm the sight,
Gay dreams to all! good night, good night. [ Joanna Baillie ]
Ah! what a pleasure it is to be a soldier. [ Boieldieu ]
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. [ Byron ]
There is no sterner moralist than pleasure. [ Byron ]
One day of pleasure is worth two of sorrow. [ Proverb ]
Pleasure limps for him who enjoys it alone. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Nature never made us for play and pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
We never forget what we learn with pleasure. [ Alfred Mercier ]
Pleasure that comes too thick grows fulsome. [ Proverb ]
God's pleasure is at the end of our prayers. [ Quarles ]
He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man. [ Bible ]
When Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. [ Byron ]
The first sure symptom of a mind in health
Is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home. [ Edward Young ]
There is a pleasure in affecting affectation. [ Lamb ]
A pleasure long expected is dear enough sold. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Pigeons are taken when crows fly at pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Give house-room to the best; 'tis never known
Verture and pleasure both to dwell in one. [ Herrick ]
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. [ William Shakespeare ]
Him only pleasure leads and peace attends,
Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends,
Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends. [ Wordsworth ]
Men are more prone to pleasure than to virtue. [ Cicero ]
Grief still treads upon the heels of Pleasure. [ Congreve ]
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease.
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these. [ Pope ]
To overcome pleasure, is the greatest pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Remorse, the fatal egg by pleasure laid,
In every bosom where her nest is made.
Hatched by the beams of truth, denies him rest,
And proves a raging scorpion in his breast. [ Cowper ]
Leave off play as soon as the pleasure is past. [ Proverb ]
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver. [ La Fontaine ]
Sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine.
But live content, which is the calmest life;
But pain is perfect misery, the worst
Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience. [ Milton ]
The string that jars
When rudely touch'd, ungrateful to the sense,
With pleasure feels the master's flying fingers,
Swells into harmony and charms the hearers. [ Rowe ]
An hour of pain is as long as a day of pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly rising over the azure realm,
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. [ Gray ]
For my own pleasure, as the man struck his wife. [ Proverb ]
Whatever wants, pleasure and vanity must be had. [ Proverb ]
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!
No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet.
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. [ Byron ]
I never could tread a single pleasure under foot. [ Browning ]
It is necessity and not pleasure that compels me. [ Dante ]
Thy pleasure points the shaft, and bends the bow;
The cluster blasts, or bids it brightly glow. [ Dr. Young ]
If pains be a pleasure to you, profit will follow. [ Proverb ]
There is a sort of pleasure in indulging of grief. [ Proverb ]
Every pleasure pre-supposes some sort of activity. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow. [ Colton ]
Oh! liberty, thou goddess, heavenly bright.
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign.
And smiling plenty, leads thy wanton train;
Eased of her load, subjection grows more light
And poverty looks cheerful in the sight;
Thou makest the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day. [ Addison ]
O happiness! our being's end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whatever thy name;
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh
For which we bear to live, or dare to die. [ Pope ]
Ever let the fancy roam; pleasure never is at home. [ Keats ]
After the greatest danger is the greatest pleasure. [ Proverb ]
An ox, when he is loose, licks himself at pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Love should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
There is little due to pleasure, but much to health. [ Proverb ]
It is difficult to repent of what gives us pleasure. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
Pleasures can undo a man at any time, if yielded to. [ Feltham ]
Sure as night follows day,
Death treads in pleasure's footsteps round the world,
When pleasure treads the path which reason shuns. [ Young ]
Cent, per cent, do we pay for every vicious pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Trust not the treason of those smiling looks.
Until ye have their guileful trains well tried;
For they are like but unto golden hooks.
That from the foolish fish their baits do hide:
So she with flattering smiles weak hearts doth guide
Unto her love, and tempt to their decay;
Whom, being caught, she kills with cruel pride,
And feeds at pleasure on the wretched prey. [ Spenser ]
Death treads in pleasure's footsteps round the world,
When pleasure treads the paths which reason shuns. [ Young ]
History, however written, is always a pleasure to us. [ Pliny ]
Oh! he thou blest with all that Heaven can send.
Long health, long youth, long pleasure - and a friend. [ Pope ]
There is no pleasure without a tincture of bitterness. [ Hafiz ]
Say to Pleasure, Gentle Eve, I will none of your apple.
[ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Moderate pleasure relaxes the spirit, and moderates it. [ Seneca ]
Choose such pleasures as recreate much and cost little. [ Fuller ]
The pleasure of what we enjoy, is lost by coveting more. [ Proverb ]
Revenge, we find, the abject pleasure of an abject mind. [ Juvenal ]
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains. [ Hume ]
Pleasure is far sweeter as a recreation than a business. [ Roswell D. Hitchcock ]
The greatest pleasure in life is the society of a friend. [ Mayo ]
Many weep for the sin, while they laugh over the pleasure. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
To woo is a pleasure in a young man, but a frenzy in an old. [ Proverb ]
There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa. [ W. J. Mickle ]
Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps. [ Alexander Smith ]
There is much more pleasure in loving, than in being beloved. [ Proverb ]
The anticipation of pleasure often equals the pleasure itself. [ Fabre d'Eglantine ]
Once thoroughly our own, knowledge ceases to give us pleasure. [ John Ruskin ]
If you would know secrets, look for them in grief or pleasure. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
We tire of those pleasures we take, but never of those we give. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty. [ Hazlitt ]
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other. [ Sterne ]
Let pleasure be ever so innocent, the excess is always criminal. [ St Evremond ]
One knows the value of pleasure only after he has suffered pain. [ Fontanelle ]
Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind. [ Juvenal ]
Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love. [ Landor ]
The greatest of all pleasures is to give pleasure to one we love. [ Boufflers ]
If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Pain addeth zest unto pleasure, and teacheth the luxury of health. [ Tupper ]
I vow and protest there's more plague than pleasure with a secret. [ Colman ]
It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The highest friendship must always lead us to the highest pleasure. [ Fielding ]
Women enjoy more the pleasure they give than the pleasure they feel. [ Rochepedre ]
Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life. [ Gibbon ]
People come to look; their greatest pleasure is to feast their eyes. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
War, hunting, and love, have a thousand troubles for their pleasure. [ Proverb ]
The world ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a speculation.
What can the Creator see with greater pleasure than a happy creature? [ Lessing ]
Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. [ Boufflers ]
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. [ Lady Montagu ]
The secret pleasure of a generous act is the great mind's great bribe. [ Dryden ]
Scratching is bad, because it begins with pleasure and ends with pain. [ Proverb ]
Pleasure may come of illusion, but happiness can only come of reality. [ Chamfort ]
Pleasure can be supported by illusion, but happiness rests upon truth. [ Chamfort ]
He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity. [ J. C. Lavater ]
In our own breast, there or nowhere flows the fountain of true pleasure. [ Wieland ]
Women are women, but to become mothers they go to duty through pleasure. [ Joubert ]
In war, hunting, and love, men for one pleasure a thousand griefs prove. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
There is pleasure in meeting the eyes of those to whom we have done good. [ La Bruyere ]
To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure. [ Ben Jonson ]
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth. [ Bacon ]
The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly deceived. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. [ Ward Beecher ]
In love, if inconstancy gives some pleasure, constancy alone gives happiness. [ Trublet ]
The pleasure of this world consists in having necessaries, not superfluities. [ Proverb ]
No man can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure. [ Noah Porter ]
The learned understand the reason of the art, the unlearned feel the pleasure. [ Quinct ]
For variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something. [ Jean Paul Richter ]
In a thousand pound's worth of law there is not a shilling's worth of pleasure. [ Proverb ]
Of all things that man possesses, women alone take pleasure in being possessed. [ Malherbe ]
I should rejoice if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to myself. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
It's better to love today than tomorrow. A pleasure postponed is a pleasure lost. [ A. Ricard ]
At fifteen, to dance is a pleasure; at twenty five, a pretext; at forty, a fatigue. [ A. Ricard ]
The inventions dictated by necessity are of the earlier date than those of pleasure. [ Cicero ]
The friendships of the world are often confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure. [ Addison ]
Take any subject of sorrowful regret, and see with how much pleasure it is associated. [ Dickens ]
When good-natured people leave us we look forward with extra pleasure to their return. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Pleasure is a jewel which will only retain its luster when it is in a setting of work. [ W. M. Strickler ]
The gains of the wicked bring shortlived pleasure, but afterwards long continued grief. [ Antiphanes ]
The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our duty and find in it our pleasure. [ Mme. de Motteville ]
And the weak soul, within itself unblessed, leans for all pleasure on another's breast. [ Goldsmith ]
Had we not faults of our own we should take less pleasure in observing those of others. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Love, pleasure, and inconstancy are but the consequences of a desire to know the truth. [ Duclos ]
A cigarette is the perfect type of pleasure; it is exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
To what fortuitous occurrence do we not owe every pleasure and convenience of our lives. [ Goldsmith ]
If we had no defects, we should not take so much pleasure in discovering those of others. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure. [ Hamerton ]
In retailing slander, we name the originator, in order to enjoy a pleasure without danger. [ Mme. de Puisieux ]
The Creator, in obliging man to eat, invites him by appetite, and rewards him with pleasure. [ Brillat-Savarin ]
There is a certain pleasure in weeping; grief finds in tears both a satisfaction and a cure. [ Ovid ]
God is mightier and wiser than we; therefore he does with us according to his good pleasure. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, - pain and pleasure. [ Jeremy Bentham ]
Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason. [ Johnson ]
Nature had made occupation a necessity; society makes it a duty; habit may make it a pleasure. [ Capelle ]
Scandal is what one-half the world takes pleasure in inventing, and the other half in believing. [ Chatfield ]
We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure that we find in appearing so. [ De Barthelemy ]
The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain. [ Colton ]
All worldly profit, all pleasure is correspondent to a like measure of anxiety or wearisomeness. [ Proverb ]
The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
The little babe up in his arms he bent, who with sweet pleasure and bold blandishment 'gan smile. [ Spenser ]
However virtuous a woman may be, a compliment on her virtue is what gives her the least pleasure. [ Prince de Ligne ]
Labour is exercise continued to fatigue; exercise is labour used only while it produces pleasure. [ Johnson ]
There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. [ Jonathan Edwards ]
As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
When a man can look upon the simple wild-rose, and feel no pleasure, his taste has been corrupted. [ Beecher ]
Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Without woman the two extremities of life would be without succor, and the middle without pleasure.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, lie in three words - health, peace, and competence. [ Pope ]
It is characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone. [ Alexander Smith ]
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. [ Lamb ]
Friendship is too pure a pleasure for a mind cankered with ambition or the lust of power and grandeur. [ Junius ]
A vine bears three grapes - the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance. [ Anacharsis ]
Infirmity and sickness may excite our pity; but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health. [ Rousseau ]
Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age, attend to thy salvation. [ Voltaire ]
The god of this world is riches, pleasure and pride, wherewith it abuses all the creatures and gifts of God. [ Luther ]
A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life; I would not exchange it for the riches of the Indies. [ E. Gibbon ]
It is a pleasure appropriate to man for him to save a fellow-man, and gratitude is acquired in no better way. [ Ovid ]
Nothing affords greater pleasure to the members of the family than the cultivation and daily sight of flowers. [ D. D. T. Moore ]
No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil, nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good. [ Cicero ]
He is incapable of a truly good action who knows not the pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others. [ Lavater ]
Any pleasure which takes and keeps the heart from God is sinful, and unless forsaken, will be fatal to the soul. [ Richard Fuller ]
Much of the pleasure, and all the benefit of conversation, depends upon our own opinion of the speaker's veracity. [ Paley ]
When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure. [ Dryden ]
If life be a pleasure, yet, since death also is sent by the hand of the same Master, neither should that displease us. [ Michael Angelo ]
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure; emotion is easily propagated from the writer to the reader. [ Joubert ]
Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence. [ Hume ]
In love, it is only the commencement that charms. I am not surprised that one finds pleasure in frequently recommencing. [ Prince de Ligne ]
Truth illuminates and gives joy; and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held. [ Matthew Arnold ]
Excitement is not enjoyment; in calmness lies true pleasure. The most precious wines are sipped, not bolted at a swallow. [ Victor Hugo ]
Oh, fair undress, best dress! It checks no vein, but every flowing limb in pleasure drowns, and heightens ease with grace. [ Thomson ]
With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth. [ Colton ]
Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail. [ Victor Hugo ]
Order in a house ought to be like the machinery in opera, whose effect produces great pleasure, but whose ends must be hid. [ Mme. Necker ]
The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one. [ Hazlitt ]
The extreme pleasure we take in talking of ourselves should make us fear that we give very little to those who listen to us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue; for it is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure. [ Tacitus ]
Since a true knowledge of nature gives us pleasure, a lively imitation of it in poetry or painting must produce a much greater. [ Dryden ]
Duty speaks with the lawful authority of many voices; pleasure has no strength except in the longing desire of the hungry unit. [ Edith Simcox ]
A friend gilds the scene of life with sunshine, seasons the cup of plenty, assuages fear, quickens hope, and animates pleasure. [ T. L. O'Beirne ]
There can hardly, I believe, be imagined a more desirable pleasure than that of praise unmixed with any possibility of flattery. [ Steele ]
Those who are unacquainted with the world take pleasure in the intimacy of great men; those who are wiser dread the consequences. [ Horace ]
Duty is the end and aim of the highest life; the truest pleasure of all is that derived from the consciousness of its fulfillment. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Pleasure and pain, the good, and the bad, are so intermixed that we can not shun the one without depriving ourselves of the other. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]
The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains. [ La Bruyere ]
If it is a pleasure to be envied and shot at, to be maligned standing and to be despised falling, then it is a pleasure to be great. [ South ]
Such is the power of imagination, that even a chimerical pleasure in expectation affects us more than a solid pleasure in possession. [ Henry Home ]
No man can be brave who considers pain to be the greatest evil of life; nor temperate, who considers pleasure to be the highest good. [ Cicero ]
A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past existence is to live twice. [ Martial ]
Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel. [ Hume ]
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. [ Emerson ]
The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness: it is the commerce of authors, women, priests, and kings. [ Mme. Roland ]
When pleasure, like the midnight flower that scorns the eye of vulgar light, begins to bloom for sons of night and maids who love the moon. [ Moore ]
If a woman says to you, I will never see you again!
hope; but, if she says, Notwithstanding, I shall always see you with pleasure
- travel.
The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even contrarily to interest. [ Coleridge ]
From my father inherit I stature and the earnest conduct of life; from motherkin my cheerful disposition and pleasure in fanciful invention. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, of himself ]
The chief pleasure (in eating) does not consist in costly seasoning or exquisite flavor, but in yourself. Do you seek for sauce by sweating. [ Horace ]
There is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure. [ Addison ]
Thoughts take up no room. When they are right, they afford a portable pleasure, which one may travel with, without any trouble or encumbrance. [ Jeremy Collier ]
He that prolongs his meals, and sacrifices his time as well as his other conveniences, to his luxury, how quickly does be outset his pleasure! [ South ]
Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure. [ Sirach ]
No one, who is a lover of money, a lover of pleasure, or a lover of glory, is likewise a lover of mankind; but only he who is a lover of virtue. [ Epictetus ]
To abstain from pleasure for a time, in order the better to enjoy in the future, is the philosophy of the sage; it is the epicureanism of reason. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts. [ Zimmermann ]
Love not pleasure; love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him. [ Carlyle ]
Remembrance! celestial present, shadow of the blessings which are no longer! Thou art still a pleasure that consoles us for all those we have lost!
The only pleasure of fame is that it proves the way to pleasure; and the more intellectual our pleasure, the better for the pleasure and for us too. [ Byron ]
A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting-place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men. [ Tupper ]
Live on what you have; live if you can on less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure--the vanity will end in shame, and the pleasure in regret. [ Johnson ]
On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company and dissipation without pleasure. [ Edward Gibbon ]
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. [ Locke ]
It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
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. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]
A man would live in Italy (a place of pleasure), but he would choose to die in Spain (where they say the Catholic religion is professed with great strictness). [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more. [ Greville ]
No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure. [ Gibbon ]
O unfortunates who sin without pleasure! in your errors be more reasonable; be, at least, fortunate sinners. Since you must be damned, be damned for amiable faults. [ Voltaire ]
Love is a bird of passage that women await with curiosity in youth, retain with pleasure in maturer years, and allow to escape with regret when old age creeps upon them. [ A. Ricard ]
Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection. [ Ruskin ]
The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure. [ St. Jerome ]
I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness. [ Pliny the Elder ]
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. [ Bolingbroke ]
Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else: but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness. [ William Law ]
Everybody takes pleasure in returning small obligations; many go so far as to acknowledge moderate ones; but there is hardly anyone who does not repay great obligations with ingratitude. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Every age has its different inclinations, but man is always the same. At ten, he is led by sweetmeats, at twenty by a mistress, at thirty by pleasure, at forty by ambition, at fifty by avarice. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance, but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date, and beside, if a woman really repents, she has to go to a bad dressmaker, otherwise no one believes in her. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Nature has lent us life, as we do a sum of money; only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that we received it? [ Cicero ]
To give pleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing the ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the diversions last. There is no worse killjoy than the ego. [ Charles Wagner ]
If we can sleep without dreaming, it is well that painful dreams are avoided. If, while we sleep, we can have any pleasing dreams, it is as the French say, tant gagne, so much added to the pleasure of life. [ Franklin ]
The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all. [ Emerson ]
Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite, are yet so contrived by nature as to be constant companions; and it is a fact that the same motions and muscles of the face are employed both in laughing and crying. [ Charron ]
It is in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure that the real character of men is discerned. [ Burke ]
What with the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or pleasure. It gives one position and prevents one from keeping it up. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
The first merit of pictures is the effect which they can produce upon the mind; and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary effects from them. Pleasure and inspiration first, analysis afterward. [ Beecher ]
The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best. [ Plutarch ]
Very few people know how to enjoy life. Some say to themselves: I do this or that, therefore I am amused: I have paid so many pieces of gold, hence I feel so much pleasure
; and they wear away their lives on that grindstone. [ A. de Musset ]
After the pleasure of possessing books there is hardly anything more pleasant than that of speaking of them, and of communicating to the public the innocent richness of thought which we have acquired by the culture of letters. [ Nodier ]
Some men find happiness in gluttony and in drunkenness, but no delicate viands can touch their taste with the thrill of pleasure, and what generosity there is in wine steadily refuses to impart its glow to their shriveled hearts. [ Whipple ]
The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces to its slothful owner the most abundant crop of poisons. [ Hume ]
Besides the pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfactory longing for something beyond the present, a striving towards regions yet unknown and unopened. [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]
Now, my young friends to whom I am addressing myself, with reference to this habit of reading, I make bold to tell you that it is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. [ Anthony Trollope ]
Abridge your hopes in proportion to the shortness of the span of human life; for while we converse, the hours, as if envious of our pleasure, fly away. Enjoy, therefore, the present time, and trust not too much to what tomorrow may produce. [ Horace ]
Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me? [ Thackeray ]
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. lie that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth lulls his age with the milder business of saving it. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Nothing on earth is without difficulty. Only the inner impulse, the pleasure it gives and love enable us to surmount obstacles; to make smooth our way, and lift ourselves out of the narrow grooves in which other people sorrowfully distress themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads and the strength that lifts men on and up in the great struggles of scientific pursuits and of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty, and makes a pleasure of duty. [ Bishop Doane ]
Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys. [ Pascal ]
Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in speaking their minds.
A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune. [ Steele ]
Who can describe the transports of a heart truly parental on beholding a daughter shoot up like some fair and modest flower, and acquire, day after day, fresh beauty and growing sweetness, so as to fill every eye with pleasure and every heart with admiration? [ Fordyce ]
Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased. [ Colton ]
Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy, and comforts us in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting pleasure to us. [ Pilpay ]
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 be the best in the company is the way to grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there. [ Quarles ]
Poetry can make even the thought of death beautiful, and the sadness of bereavement not without a certain pleasure. Great poets have elicited from the sternest suffering a principle of enjoyment. Sublime faith and earnest love can conjure spirits the most lovely from the darkest abyss. [ Tuckerman ]
Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him. [ Thomas Hobbes ]
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards rewarded by joy. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Every moment instructs, and every object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after long time. [ Emerson ]
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admire, - they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. [ Thackeray ]
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 bands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
The world produces for every pint of honey a gallon of gall, for every dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for every inch of mirth an ell of moan; and as the ivy twines around the oak, so does misery and misfortune encompass the happy man. Felicity, pure and unalloyed felicity, is not a plant of earthly growth: her gardens are the skies. [ Robert Burton ]
There are two things which help to make music - melody and harmony. Now, as most of you know, there is melody in music when the different sounds of the same tune follow each other so as to give us pleasure; there is harmony in music when different sounds, instead of following each other, come at the same time so as to give us pleasure. [ C. Kingsley ]
Often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us by its old perfume, an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora clouds of our first dim feelings! [ Richter ]
Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe. to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals. [ Goldsmith ]
A pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate understanding, love of God and selfdenial, peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish pleasure of unchastity. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The powers of music are felt or known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood; to raise joy and grief; to give pleasure and pain; to cure diseases, and the mortal sting of the tarantula; to give motions to the feet as well as the heart; to compose disturbed thoughts; to assist and heighten devotion itself. [ Sir W. Temple ]
Who is there who has not experienced that often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us as village children a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us. by its old perfume an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower-goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora-clouds of our first dim feelings? [ Richter ]
An inoffensive pleasantness is a good quality to improve friendship. It enlivens conversation, relieves melancholy, and conveys advice with better success than naked reprehension. This gilding the pill reconciles the palate to the prescription, without weakening the force of the ingredients, and he who can cure by recreation, and make pleasure the vehicle of health, is a doctor in good earnest. [ R. Hall ]
Superstition is the fear of a spirit whose passions and acts are those of a man, who is present in some places, and not in others; who makes some places holy, and not others; who is kind to one person, and unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrificing a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. [ John Ruskin ]
When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon those whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious with out pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Though no participator in the joys of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practice toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object in its motive; we cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining years; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affections seem to expand at the sight of the first blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. With summer flowers we seem to live, as with our neighbors, in harmony and good order; but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships. [ G. A. Sola ]
Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. [ Goldsmith ]