Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.
We chase the reward, we get the reward and then we discover that the true reward is always the next reward. Buying pleasure is a false end.
One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.
Obviously, we all want to feel pleasure. It can't be one of our highest priorities because, simply put, anything worthwhile in life is going to be un-pleasurable at times. Pleasure is the type of thing that if you get the other stuff right, pleasure will happen on its own.
The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.
I'm a Christian, but I'm not a puritan. I believe in pleasure and orgiastic pleasure has its place, intellectual pleasure has its place, social pleasure has its place, televisual pleasure has its place [in life].
In every work a reward added makes the pleasure twice as great.
Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.
I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
None the less, perhaps, the highest pleasure in art is identical with the highest pleasure inscientific theory. The emotion which accompanies the clear recognition of unity in a complex seems to be so similar in art and in science that it is difficult not to suppose that they are psychologically the same. It is, as it were, the final stage of both processes.
I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.
There is no reward so delightful, no pleasure so exquisite, as having one's work known and acclaimed by those whose applause confers honor.
Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
The mind is but too naturally prone to pleasure, but too easily yielded to dissipation.