A Quote by Duane Elgin

When a person's primary objective is to maximize material pleasures while minimizing discomforts, then life becomes a constant process of "pushing" (trying to push away from discomforts) and "grabbing" (trying to acquire or hold on to that which gives pleasure). With the loss of inner balance that accompanies a habitual "pushing and grabbing" approach to life, a deeper pain ensues-that of becoming aware of the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of the pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding process itself.

Duane Elgin

Quote Topics

Acquire Approach Avoiding Aware Away Balance Becomes Becoming Constant Deeper Gives Grabbing Habitual Hold Inner Itself Life Loss Material Maximize Minimizing Objective Pain Person Pleasure Pleasures Primary Process Push Pushing Seeking Then Trying Ultimate Which While

Quote Author

Duane Elgin
American - Author

When you're comfortable and secure, it's not enough. The mind doesn't stop there because it has to continue to focus itself as this body, so it moves to pleasure. And pleasure really is a non-existent thing. When we're experiencing pleasure, we're trying to hold onto it as it leaves, so it really isn't pleasure. Pleasure is pain because we're grasping.

Byron Katie

For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

Honore de Balzac

Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.

M. Scott Peck

The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain; and the object of economics is to maximize happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain.

William Stanley Jevons

Life for most people is a bad dream. They live in pain, grabbing at what they can for pleasure. As they grow old, they despair. Things don't work out the way you planned.

Frederick Lenz

Epicurus recommends bread and cheese as the staple, and his emphasis is more on avoiding pain than on seeking pleasure, insofar as pleasure-seeking tends to be followed by painful after-effects.

Catherine Wilson

PAIN was no longer a cause of suffering, but a source of pleasure, Because they were redeeming humanity from its sins. Pain becomes joy, the meaning of life, pleasure.

Paulo Coelho

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.

Saint Augustine

I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure . . .

Shane MacGowan

We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other.

Joko Beck

Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.

Tony Robbins

As an athlete, you learn to keep pushing through the pain until the pain eventually becomes unbearable. Even then, you are told to continue.

Katelyn Ohashi

Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is not pleasure. The purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love - which is the definition of God. In pursuing that goal we find happiness. Pleasure is not the purpose of anything; pleasure is a by-product resulting from doing something that is good. One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves, 'How can I please God?' and, 'Why am I not better?' It is the pleasure-seeker who is bored, for all pleasures diminish with repetition.