A Quote by Mason Cooley

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

Mason Cooley

Quote Topics

Consciousness Pain Pleasure

Quote Author

Mason Cooley
American - Writer
1927 - 2002

Whenever we experience an event, whether we're visiting the dentist or taking a dream vacation, our consciousness registers that experience internally on a spectrum with great pain at one end and extreme pleasure at the other. Once completed, the memory of that experience is tagged to either pain or pleasure, and it continues to exist in our bodymind.

Deepak Chopra

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

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.

Michael Shermer

Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.

Lance Armstrong

The existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation. Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature

John Berger

The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain.

Tertullian

The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain

Tertullian

Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain.

Samuel Johnson

The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together.

Epicurus

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

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

The only way to be a champion is by going through these forced reps and the torture and pain. That's way I call it the torture routine. Because it's like forced torture. Torturing my body. What helps me is to think of this pain as pleasure. Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure. And so when I am experiencing pain I'm in heaven. It's great. People suggest this is masochistic. But they're wrong. I like pain for a particular reason. I don't like needle's stuck in my arm. But I do like the pain that is necessary to be a champion.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

In youth, the absense of pleasure is pain, in old age, the absence of pain is pleasure.

Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

It is important to distinguish between sense-pleasure and sense-desire. There is nothing wrong with sense-pleasure. Pleasure and pain are part of our human experience. Sense-desire, on the other hand, is the grasping at pleasure or the avoidance of pain. This is what creates suffering-grasping and avoidance.