A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
~ Walter Bagehot

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
~ Joseph Addison

A fool bolts pleasure, then complains of moral indigestion.
~ Minna Antrim

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
~ Aristotle

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
~ Jane Austen

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
~ Honore De Balzac

Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.
~ Roland Barthes

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.
~ Georges Bataille

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
~ Arnold Bennett

He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.
~ Bible

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. [Proverbs 9:17]
~ Bible

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.
~ Josh Billings

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.
~ Pierre Bonnard

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
~ Nathaniel Branden

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
~ Warren Buffett

A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.
~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.
~ Aaron Burr

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.
~ Samuel Butler

To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.
~ Charles Buxton

There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
~ Lord Byron