If I could do my life over, I would try to cleanse at least my pleasures of self-pity.
In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature.
Work, especially if you're lucky in what you do, is one of the great pleasures of life, but - like all pleasures - it can become selfish.
Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life.
The art of life lies in taking pleasures as they pass, and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral.
I once heard that Quentin Tarantino, who I obviously love and think is a genius, says that there's no such thing as guilty pleasure, there's only pleasures. And I do love that idea, because I do think that there's a pretentiousness when people make a list of their favorite things. I like to live a life where I don't think of my pleasures as guilty pleasures.
I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another reading while eating.
Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.
Most wine knowledge does not directly enhance the pleasures to be had in drinking wine but, rather, enhances one's ability to discover such pleasures
Observation is the most enduring of the pleasures of life.
Conning the conmen is one of life’s most satisfying pleasures.
There is a line that I always loved from Lucretius. He said, "The sublime is the art of exchanging easier for more difficult pleasures." The presumption of that formulation is that the more difficult pleasures are actually better than the easier pleasures. That is why one makes the exchange.
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.
What is the purpose and meaning and nature of sexual intercourse? It seems to me to be quite clear. It's for two things. It's for babies and it's for bonding. And that's what happens when you have sexual intercourse - you have babies and you bond. My view is, if you don't want to have babies and you don't want to bond, then you shouldn't be having sexual intercourse.
I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.
Love makes the greatest pleasures and most sensitive misfortunes of life.