Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.

When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.

And yet you take away the one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life of mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman’s most marked characteristic

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved.

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind generally, increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion

Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed! A true antithesis to knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge

Pleasures seem solid in their pursuit; but are mere clouds in the enjoyment

Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss, he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold

The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasure

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

I thank heaven I have often had it in my power to give help and relief, and this is still my greatest pleasure. If I could choose my sphere of action now, it would be that of the most simple and direct efforts of this kind.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

You change people by delight, by pleasure

No sign of pleasure greeted the announcement. The mood in the hall was leaden. My mood was livelier. Fright is livelier than lead.

No sign of pleasure greeted the announcement. The mood in the hall was leaden. My mood was livelier. Fright is livelier than lead.

I have the possibility to watch Messi in training each morning, and because of what he demonstrates he is the best player in the world, he stated during a press conference. It is a pleasure to watch him, and because of the way he plays he is an undisputed leader of the Barcelona team

When I speak everyone listens and that gives me pleasure – even Zlatan, who has got a strong personality. When I talk he listens to me and I explain why he has got to do this or that.s

For me, it’s a pleasure to play football every three or four days.

The pleasure for me is in the writing process, which has its own challenges.

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

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.

Pleasure to me is wonder – the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.

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

Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live

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

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

believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.

The philosopher’s school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.

No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures are gained bring pains many times greater than the pleasures.

The summit of pleasure is the elimination of all that gives pain.

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.

You have only always to do what is right. It will become easier by practice, and you enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure of an approving conscience.

It is my great pleasure performing in front of my fans, and I enjoy it a lot.

Happiness is not mere pleasure not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.

The heart asks pleasure first, and then excuse from pain.

In any profession, you should think positively. That’s the driver of your mind. If your mind is really thinking positive then you are on the right track. ‘Pleasure in what you’re doing puts perfection in your work.

If I could prove by logic that you would die in five minutes, I should be sorry you were going to die, but my sorrow would be very much mitigated by pleasure in the proof.

It was a pleasure to burn.

My life didn’t please me, so I created my life.

The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world.

Such happiness is relative and is better called pleasure or satisfaction.

A woman is an occasional pleasure, but a cigar is always a smoke.

Pleasure and pain are only aspects of the mind. Our essential nature is happiness

A recipe is a guideline. Adding, subtracting, evolving it – that is part of the pleasure.

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.

Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.

As we mark this anniversary, it gives me pleasure to renew to you the pledge I gave in 1947 that my life will always be devoted to your service.

1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis’.

A great pleasure in life is to do what they say you can’t.

I don’t regret my painful times, i bare my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that that smile dimmed by tears.

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.

Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, that, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.

The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and likewise pain.

I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs, or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably

It’s a pleasure to be standing here. It’s a pleasure to be standing up.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain

Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me, pain is a pleasure.

What I know for sure is that pleasure is energy reciprocated. What you put out comes back. Your base level of pleasure is determined by how you view your whole life.

Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work

It’s true we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone, but we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

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

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.

He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully.

The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.

Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, lie in three words: health, peace, and competence

Please all, and you will please none

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t

The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Some mathematician said: ‘Pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.