Quotes About Hedonism

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

I soon came to understand that drink, tobacco and prostitutes were all great means if dissipating (even for a few moments) my dread for human beings. I came even to feel that if I had to sell every last possession to obtain these means of escape, it would be well worth it.

Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Seeking to eliminate pain nonetheless puts it at the heart of the system. As a result, today we suffer from not wanting to suffer just as one can make oneself ill by trying to be perfectly healthy. Furthermore, we now tell ourselves a strange fable about a society completely devoted to hedonism, and for which everything becomes an irritation, a torture. Unhappiness is not only unhappiness; it is, worse yet, a failure to be happy.

The new hedonism seems unable to give people a reason to go on living. Its earliest fruits appear to be poisonous. Will this new "liberating" culture that our young have so enthusiastically embraced prove the deadliest carcinogen of them all? And if the West is in the grip of a "culture of death," as the pope contends and the statistics seem to show, is Western civilization about to follow Lenin's empire to the same inglorious end?

If you can't fuck it and it doesn't dance, eat it or throw it away.

we shopped and we shopped and we shopped, and now we're dying for a drink." She glanced at me. "From the look of you, you suffer from no such problem.

The new hedonism seems unable to give people a reason to go on living. Its earliest fruits appear to be poisonous. Will this new "liberating" culture that our young have so enthusiastically embraced prove the deadliest carcinogen of them all? And if the West is in the grip of a "culture of death," as the pope contends and the statistics seem to show, is Western civilization about to follow Lenin's empire to the same inglorious end?

Let's go back to the question of what people want and consider an answer that, whatever else one might say about it, is at least pretty clear. It's pleasure. The Greek term for pleasure is h?don?, which is why those who argue for the centrality of pleasure are called hedonists.

wouldn't it be a positive experience for me if these things come to pass and a negative one if they don't? Well, yes: part of what it means to want something is that you are pleased when it happens. But this isn't an argument for hedonism, because it doesn't show that the pleasure is the goal itself, as opposed to a by-product.

So experiences of pleasure and purpose are all that matter in the end. Hedonism is the school of thought that holds that pleasure is the only thing that matters in the end. By adding sentiments of purpose to pleasure, I define my position as sentimental hedonism. I am a sentimental hedonist and I think that, deep down, we all are.

Avarice is fear sheathed in gold.

he said "Miami" left the impression of Sodom-by-the-Sea.

What will you do now?" "Live until it gives me away, of course. And drink only the best champagne. There's not time for anything else." His face was delicate and sensitive-looking, like a well-bred cat's. He also had rich brown eyes that seemed to want to laugh at the idea of sadness or self-pity.

I couldn't understand why Frank would want to spend time with this crowd. They were bored, naughty children with highballs and morphine and sex for their toys. People were toys, too.

Take up something that you know will never bring you any returns except pleasure—in other words, allow yourself to live the way brilliant eighteenth century courtesans lived. Don't be afraid of having a decorative life, even if all the decorations come from you.

Southwark therefore became a setting for a long-running battle between the highest concentration of hedonists in he country, and a movement whose adherents believed that if you tapped your foot to music, you might as well just go the whole hog, rename yourself Beelzebub and have sexual intercourse with the corpse of a recently sacrificed goat.

Eat, drink, and couple like minks, for tomorrow you could come down with one hell of a pony drip, and Mrs. Lee will ban you from the premises.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.