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Quotes About Pleasure

Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative film; we develop it later, when we are at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom, the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people.
~ Marcel Proust
It was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect on him, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano to whom more people willingly give his popular surname, Botticelli, now that it suggests not so much the actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which has of late obtained common currency.
~ Marcel Proust
But for the invert vice begins, not when he establishes a relationship (for too many reasons may govern that), but when he takes his pleasure with women.
~ Marcel Proust
It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil. And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.
~ Marcel Proust
But so far as the pleasure was concerned, I was naturally not conscious of it until some time later, when, back at the hotel, and in my room alone, I had become myself again. Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative, which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner dark-room the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people.
~ Marcel Proust
He could see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures which - while he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed, as anxiously as I myself was to go to bed, some years later, on the evenings when he came to dine with us at Combray - seemed illimitable to him since he had not been able to see their end.
~ Marcel Proust
She tried to make her eyes seem tender; she did not know why, for no reason, for pleasure, the pleasure of charity, of a little vanity, and also gratuity, the pleasure of carving your name into a tree trunk for a passerby whom you will never see, the pleasure of throwing a bottle into the ocean.
~ Marcel Proust
If fruitful love, meant to perpetuate the race, noble as a familial, social, human duty, is superior to purely sensual love, then there is no hierarchy of sterile loves, and such a love is no less moral - or, rather, it is no more immoral for a woman to find pleasure with another woman than with a person of the opposite sex.
~ Marcel Proust
My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful, but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it could play the piano, I am sure it would really play.
~ Marcel Proust
We desire some pleasure, and the material means of obtaining it are lacking. "It is a mistake," Labruyère tells us, "to be in love without an ample fortune." There is nothing for it but to attempt a gradual elimination of our desire for that pleasure.
~ Marcel Proust
If the theater is the refuge of the conversationalist whose friend is mute and whose mistress is insipid, then conversation, even the most exquisite, is the pleasure of men without imagination.
~ Marcel Proust
Non subisco mai l'autorità delle perturbazioni atmosferiche né delle divisioni convenzionali del tempo. Sarei lieto di riabilitare l'uso della pipa d'oppio e del kriss malese, ma ignoro quello di quegli strumenti infinitamente più perniciosi e d'altronde piattamente borghesi, l'orologio e l'ombrello.
~ Marcel Proust
seeking to indicate to her by the extent of his gratitude the corresponding intensity of the pleasures which it was in her power to bestow on him, the supreme pleasure being to guarantee him immunity, for as long as his love should last and he remain vulnerable, from the assaults of jealousy.
~ Marcel Proust
Já houve quem dissesse que a beleza é uma promessa de felicidade. Inversamente a possibilidade de prazer pode ser um começo de beleza.
~ Marcel Proust
La cordialité surfait avec autant de plaisir qu'en prend la taquinerie à déprécier.
~ Marcel Proust
And often, when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure.
~ Marcel Proust
What hither brought us, hate, not love, nor hope   Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste   Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy,   Save what is in destroying, other joy   To me is lost. Then
~ John Milton
I didn't keep count of our ejaculations, though our moans and cries were loud and unrestrained, transforming the mesmerizing music into a symphony all our own.
~ Unknown
In the meantime, the wildest health and pleasure grounds accessible and available to tourists seeking escape from care and dust and early death are the parks and reservations of the West.
~ John Muir
The work of obedience is difficult and of the highest importance; so that if anyone can be negligent therein because God will help and assist him, it is because he hates it, he likes it not. Let others do what they please, I shall endeavour to comply with the apostle's advice upon the enforcement which he gives unto it: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure. These
~ John Owen
No pleasure is taken anywhere in modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to escape out of modern cities into natural scenery. It would be well, if in all other matters, we were as ready to put up with what we dislike., for the sake of compliance with established law, as we are in architecture.
~ John Ruskin
If the pleasure of change is too often repeated, it ceases to be delightful, for the change itself becomes monotonous, and we are driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is the diseased love of change that brought the end of the gothic school.
~ John Ruskin
It is not that the noble nature loves monotony, any more than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear with it, and receive a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape.
~ John Ruskin
My invariable criterion for whether a poem deserved to be included in these pages was this: that it should be able to surprise and delight the common reader. Every page should be a source of pleasure and discovery.
~ Unknown