Fleeting Pleasures Quotes

The Tantric view is that there is already a complete Buddha dormant within each of us, but we've individually and collectively become addicted to horror movies that we mistake for documentaries. From this perspective, our whole society is caught up in a kind of shared horror story, imagining ourselves as zombie consumers rather than empowered citizens: afraid, insecure, incapable beings who have no choice but to wander through life grasping after fleeting pleasures, needlessly competing with each other instead of collaborating, isolating ourselves from the plight of those whose stories we don't understand. Because our whole society is both constructing and watching this shared screenplay simultaneously, the physical world begins to take on the qualities of this horror movie, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the theater of our experience from the screen of our own projections. ~ Ethan Nichtern

All the evils in the world come not because our desires for happiness are too strong, but because they are so weak that we settle for fleeting pleasures that do not satisfy our deepest souls, but in the end destroy them. The root of all evil is that we are the kind of people who settle for the love of money instead of the love of God (1 Timothy 6:10). ~ John Piper

Material progress and a higher standard of living bring us greater comfort and health, but do not lead to a transformation of the mind, which is the only thing capable of providing lasting peace. Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual in nature. It depends on the happiness of others and it is based on love and affection. ~ Dalai Lama

The Calvary road with Jesus is not a joyless road. It is a painful one, but it is a profoundly happy one. When we choose the fleeting pleasures of comfort and security over the sacrifices and sufferings of missions and evangelism and ministry and love, we choose against joy. ~ John Piper

Don't be snowed by a handsome guy at a bookstore who quotes Cicero and Proust. They are often not the real thing. As with many fleeting pleasures
travel in their company, enjoy them every so often, and then get on with your life. ~ Jennifer Kaufman

I believe, my lady, that life is the phantom, and love still more fleeting and elusive - here one minute like a sweet scent you can't quite recognize and gone the next. Best enjoy both while you can. ~ Dawn Hammill

The Christian living in disobedience also lives devoid of joy and hope. But when he begins to understand that Christ has delivered him from the reign of sin, when he begins to see that he is united to Him who has all power and authority and that it is possible to walk in obedience, he begins to have hope, and as he hopes in Christ, he begins to have joy. In the strength of this joy, he begins to overcome the sins that have so easily entangle him. He then finds that the joy of a holy walk is infinitely more satisfying than the fleeting pleasures of sin. But to experience this joy, we must make some choices. We must choose to forsake sin, not only because it is defeating to us but because it grieves the heart of God. ~ Jerry Bridges

Like the fires caught and fixed by a great colourist from the impermanence of the atmosphere and the sun, so that they should enter and adorn a human dwelling, they invited me, those chrysanthemums, to put away all my sorrows and to taste with a greedy rapture during that tea-time hour the all-too-fleeting pleasures of November, whose intimate and mysterious splendour they set ablaze all around me. ~ Marcel Proust

Innocence alone can be passionate. The innocent have no sorrow, no suffering, though they have had a thousand experiences. It is not the experiences that corrupt the mind but what they leave behind, the residue, the scars, the memories. These accumulate, pile up one on top of the other, and then sorrow begins. This sorrow is time. Where time is, innocency is not. Passion is not born of sorrow. Sorrow is experience, the experience of everyday life, the life of agony and fleeting pleasures, fears and certainties. You cannot escape from experiences, but they need not take root in the soil of the mind. These roots give rise to problems, conflicts and constant struggle. There is no way out of this but to die each day to every yesterday. The clear mind alone can be passionate. Without passion you cannot see the breeze among the leaves or the sunlight on the water. Without passion there is no love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Peace. Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual by nature. It depends on the happiness of others, and it is based on love and tenderness. We ~ Dalai Lama XIV

It's a sad thing about politics that most people get power too late, in that they differ from ladies of easy virtue who get their pleasures too early. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

I wanted to move away from Holland for my work because I felt that things would be better for me in England. But when I heard Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures', that pushed me towards making the move and making it real. I met them within 12 days of moving to England. ~ Anton Corbijn

Everything is so fleeting and impermanent. It's enough to drive you bat shit crazy. ~ Shane Kuhn

In this dark and wounded society, writing can give you the pleasures of the woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your nest and say, This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong. ~ Anne Lamott

Look at us, Lazarus, and share our joy. Is there anything stronger than love?"

And Lazarus looked. And for the rest of their life they kept on loving each other, but their passion grew gloomy and joyless, like those funeral cypresses whose roots feed on the decay of the graves and whose black summits in a still evening hour seek in vain to reach the sky. Thrown by the unknown forces of life into each other's embraces, they mingled tears with kisses, voluptuous pleasures with pain, and they felt themselves doubly slaves, obedient slaves to life, and patient servants of the silent Nothingness. Ever united, ever severed, they blazed like sparks and like sparks lost themselves in the boundless Dark. ~ Leonid Andreyev

Regard this fleeting world like this:
Like stars fading and vanishing at dawn,
like bubbles on a fast-moving stream,
like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades of grass,
like a candle flickering in a strong wind ...
echoes, mirages, and phantoms, hallucinations,
and like a dream. ~ Gautama Buddha

Tis the gradual furnace of the world,
In whose hot air poor spirits are upcurl'd
Until they crumple, or else grow like steel-
Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring-
Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel,
But takes away the power- this can avail,
By drying up our joy in everything,
To make our former pleasures all seem stale.

- Tristram and Iseult ~ Matthew Arnold

Life itself is selfless giving. We're not given this life just for own amusement and pleasures. ~ Frederick Lenz

True love is quiescent, except in the nascent moments of true humility. ~ Bryant H. McGill

I should have told you long ago how much I love you, but those fleeting moments of opportunity passed all too quickly. Before I knew it, you had gone to your eternity. Nevertheless, I want to tell you now that I love you . . . still! ~ Terry L. Mills

It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed for ever. I am not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many people have used, that you divert or cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey abroad, or spend a lot of time carefully going through your accounts and administering your estate, or constantly be involved in some new activity. All those things help only for a short time; they do not cure grief but hinder it. But I would rather end it than distract it. ~ Seneca

Without patience and interest, one will only have access to immediate pleasures - which are good, but much lower in quality than the pleasures gained over time. ~ Olivier Magny

She was wary, trained to expect little of life, grateful for small pleasures, on her guard against promises, accustomed to making the best of things, in the habit of both wanting and not daring to want something more. Now Miracle Polish has come along, with its air of swagger and its taunting little whisper. Why not? it seemed to say. Why on earth not? But the mirrors that strengthened me, that filled me with new life, made Monica bristle. Did she feel that I preferred a false version of her, a glittering version, to the flesh-and-blood Monica with her Band-Aids and big knees and her burden of sorrows? What drew me was exactly the opposite. In the shining mirrors I saw the true Monica, the hidden Monica, the Monica buried beneath years of discouragement. Far from escaping into a world of polished illusions, I was able to see, in the depths of those mirrors, the world no longer darkened by diminishing hopes and fading dreams. There, all was clear, all was possible. ~ Steven Millhauser

For all the glamour of living forever ... immortality is really just a long curse. Finite life is precious; it's fleeting and significant. But immortality ... immortality isn't living at all. It's a permanent existence void of meaning. ~ Chelsea Fine

I've never done work for money ever. If your choices are based on grosses and the film doesn't do well, what does that mean? It leaves you with nothing. ~ Tom Cruise

It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without being worsted. ~ Aristippus

To me, it has always been difficult to understand those evangelical Christians who insist upon living in the crisis as if no crisis existed. They say they serve the Lord, but they divide their days so as to leave plenty of time to play and loaf and enjoy the pleasures of the world as well. They are at ease while the world burns ... ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You should think less about the future and more about the pleasures at hand. ~ George R R Martin

Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home
"One swing set, well worn but structually sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may alos learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard how you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around."
Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill. ~ John Green

I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the pleasures of the novel has been a staple of book reviewing since at least 1960. ~ Russell Smith

Did the sudden dark remind you that all of the things we expect to be there for us, to protect us, shelter us, provide for us, are fleeting and finite? ~ Jonathan Maberry

...we see life as deeply in our pleasures as in our pains. ~ Adam Gopnik

I'd found love
only to discover how fleeting it can be. ~ Debbie Macomber

Kartik places a sovereign in the lady's cup, and I know that it's likely all he has.
"Why did you do that?" I ask.
He kicks a rock on the ground, balancing it nimbly between his feet like a ball. "She needed it."
Father says it isn't good to give money to beggers. They'll only spend it unwisely on drink or other pleasures. "She might buy ale with it."
He shrugs. "Then she'll have ale. It isn't the pound that matters; it's the hope ... I know what it's like to fight for things that others take for granted. ~ Libba Bray

Our pleasures were simple - they included survival. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is a mistake to restrict oneself in one's pleasures,' Ross said. 'One should never risk being thought a Puritan. ~ Winston Graham

Typical frivolous always ended by sacrificing to vulgar pleasures. She ~ Henry James

Seeing the person yeu love come home
Happiness is so simple to a child ~ Sandesh Hukpachongbang

Historians Will and Ariel Durant have written in The Story of Civilization: The Reformation that at the time of Luther, "a gallon of beer per day was the usual allowance per person, even for nuns." This may help to explain why beer figures so prominently in the life and writings of the great reformer. He was German, after all, and he lived at a time when beer was the European drink of choice. Moreover, having been freed from what he considered to be a narrow and life-draining religious legalism, he stepped into the world ready to enjoy its pleasures to the glory of God. For Luther, beer flowed best in a vibrant Christian life. ~ Stephen Mansfield

Very different from eros is philia, a serene love much more akin to friendship, with its reciprocal kindnesses. You love each other for the happy experiences and pleasures you share. ~ Francois Lelord

One of my greatest pleasures in motor racing is qualifying. You have loads of freedom from pushing a lap the whole way. I've always been very good in qualifying in the past; everything I've done, I've got pole positions. ~ Bruno Senna

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people "acknowledge, experience, and bear" the reality of life - with all its pleasures and heartbreak. "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves," he'd say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel. I ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The limits of pleasures are as yet neither known nor fixed, and we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Life isn't the orderly black-and-white business we'd prefer it to be. It's messy and complicated and horribly blurred around the edges. All we can ever do is make the best of it. And maybe grab at those fleeting chances of happiness.' 'But never at the expense of anyone else's ~ Erica James

I am interested in the confines of the page and busting through/off the page as well. A writer must let go of the line when writing prose poems, which brings its own pleasures. ~ Denise Duhamel

There must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories. ~ Neil Postman

Have I no harvest but a thorn
   To let me bloud, and not restore
What I have lost with cordiall fruit?
Sure there was wine
   Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn
   Before my tears did drown it.
   Is the yeare onely lost to me?
   Have I no bayes to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
   Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
   Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands,
Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee
   Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
   While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. ~ George Herbert

Not the poem which we have read , but that to which we return , with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry . ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be enjoyed by a worthy mind. Pleasure's couch is virtues grave. ~ Augustine Joseph Hickey Duganne

The Emperor, you see, protects ... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to protect us from harm. To protect our physical bodies from murder and damage, to protect our minds from madness, to protect our souls ... There are insane dangers in the cosmos, dangers that mankind is fundamentally unable to comprehend, let alone survive. So he protects us. There are truths out there that would drive us mad by one fleeting glimpse of them. So he chooses not to share them with us. That's why he made you ... Remember, Garviel. The Emperor is our truth and out light. If we trust in him, he will protect. ~ Dan Abnett

Purely altruistic behavior is pretty much impossible because of the selfish pleasures we derive from it. ~ Nicholas Kristof

Consider the capacity of the human body for pleasure. Sometimes, it is pleasant to eat, to drink, to see, to touch, to smell, to hear, to make love. The mouth. The eyes. The fingertips, The nose. The ears. The genitals. Our voluptific faculties (if you will forgive me the coinage) are not exclusively concentrated here. The whole body is susceptible to pleasure, but in places there are wells from which it may be drawn up in greater quantity. But not inexhaustibly. How long is it possible to know pleasure? Rich Romans ate to satiety, and then purged their overburdened bellies and ate again. But they could not eat for ever. A rose is sweet, but the nose becomes habituated to its scent. And what of the most intense pleasures, the personality-annihilating ecstasies of sex? I am no longer a young man; even if I chose to discard my celibacy I would surely have lost my stamina, re-erecting in half-hours where once it was minutes. And yet if youth were restored to me fully, and I engaged again in what was once my greatest delight – to be fellated at stool by nymphet with mouth still blood-heavy from the necessary precautions – what then? What if my supply of anodontic premenstruals were never-ending, what then? Surely, in time, I should sicken of it.

"Even if I were a woman, and could string orgasm on orgasm like beads on a necklace, in time I should sicken of it. Do you think Messalina, in that competition of hers with a courtesan, knew pleasure as much on the first occasi ~ Jesus I. Aldapuerta

Mere pleasure is at best but fleeting; happiness is abiding, for in the recollection thereof is renewed. ~ James E. Talmage

Savour life's pleasures in abundance ~ Ginger Sullivan

The suppression of ecstasy and condemnation of pleasure by patriarchal religion have left us in a deep, festering morass. The pleasures people seek in modern times are superficial, venal, and corrupt. This is deeply unfortunate, for it justifies the patriarchal condemnation of pleasure that rotted out our hedonistic capacities in the first place! Narcissism is rampant, having reached a truly global scale. It now appears to have entered the terminal phase known as "cocooning," the ultimate state of isolation. Dissociation from the natural world verges on complete disembodiment, represented in Archontic ploys such as "transhumanism," cloning, virtual reality, and the uploading of human consciousness into cyberspace. The computer looks due to replace the cross as the primary image of salvation. It is already the altar where millions worship daily. If the technocrats prevail, artificial intelligence and artificial life will soon overrule the natural order of the planet. ~ John Lamb Lash