Material Pleasure Quotes

If animals are just commodities, then we are just consumers, with no greater good than material pleasure and no higher law than appetite. ~ Matthew Scully

Regardless of how much wealth [material pleasures] one has, if he does not like bondage even for a moment, then he has become qualified to understand the science of the Vitarags [the enlightened one's]. ~ Dada Bhagwan

What we are only now beginning to fully realize is that in seeking material pleasure too constantly, the capacity for enjoyment or fulfillment decreases and eventually becomes exhausted. ~ Alex Campbell

What we said publicly is that we know that Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons, he's used them; we know about his biological weapons programs; and in the nuclear equation, left to his own devices, with no fissile material, by the end of the decade, he'll have a nuclear weapon. But if fissile material is provided to Saddam Hussein, he'll have a nuclear weapon within a year, so I'd say the year is the outside timetable. ~ Richard Armitage

Hauling a deep, make-me-feel-sexy breath, she
pinned on what she hoped was a coquettish smile, turned as smoothly as her bulky gown allowed, and found her previously pleasure-filled sightline newly blocked by sixfoot- and-change of home-grown Texas assholery.
This particular example happened to have thick, wavy
hair as dark as his heart, deep, soulful eyes as blue as the garter still circling her thigh, and a face that made angels weep. Probably after he'd screwed them senseless, knocked them up, and abandoned them with a wink and a smile. ~ Kate Meader

Partly why I love to operate is that I love to watch an actor within a shot. When you watch a shot, and you know that everything's come together, I feel I'm the first person watching it. I always get pleasure out of that. ~ Roger Deakins

The months passed away. Slowly a great fear came over Viola, a fear that would hardly ever leave her. For every month at the full moon, whether she would or no, she found herself driven to the maze, through its mysterious walks into that strange dancing-room. And when she was there the music began once more, and once more she danced most deliciously for the moon to see. The second time that this happened she had merely thought that it was a recurrence of her own whim, and that the music was but a trick that the imagination had chosen to repeat. The third time frightened her, and she knew that the force that sways the tides had strange power over her. The fear grew as the year fell, for each month the music went on for a longer time - each month some of the pleasure had gone from the dance. On bitter nights in winter the moon called her and she came, when the breath was vapor, and the trees that circled her dancing-room were black, bare skeletons, and the frost was cruel. She dared not tell anyone, and yet it was with difficulty that she kept her secret. Somehow chance seemed to favor her, and she always found a way to return from her midnight dance to her own room without being observed. Each month the summons seemed to be more imperious and urgent. Once when she was alone on her knees before the lighted altar in the private chapel of the palace she suddenly felt that the words of the familiar Latin prayer had gone from her memory. She rose to her feet, she sobbed bitterly, b ~ Barry Pain

The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material. ~ Blaise Pascal

What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other. You have a choice in life: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief or as much displeasure as possible as the price for an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I have transmitted genetic material, all I have to do between my daughters' birth and my death is to decorate my life. ~ Peter Greenaway

My father and mother - I figured if I could make them laugh, they'd stop fighting. I stole all their material. ~ Jerry Stiller

I know what its like to direct. You become a more considerate actor. After you have directed, you understand what is going on. You can't help but think of the material as a director. You do come up with suggestions. You come up with shortcuts that you weren't aware of before. You try to be helpful to the director if he has a lot on his hands. ~ Dolph Lundgren

If you have divine motives, material benefits will follow suit but they are no longer material; they have become divine. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini

I've learned more from discomfort than I could ever have learned from pleasure. ~ Francis Shenstone

When I heard about these lessons, I thought they would be a dreadful waste of my time. I pictured two very silly girls uninterested in any sort of instruction. But that describes neither Miss Gray nor yourself. I should tell you, I used to train younger Shadowhunters in Madrid. And there were quite a few of them who didn't have the same native ability that you do. You're a talented student, and it is my pleasure to teach you."
Sophie felt herself flush scarlet. "You cannot be serious."
"I am. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I came here and again so the next time and the next. I found that I was looking forward to it. In fact, it would be fair to say that since my return home, I have hated everything in London except these hours with you. ~ Cassandra Clare

A whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing; as if I borrowed mine oaths of him and might not spend them at my pleasure. When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths, ha? ~ William Shakespeare

The Neo-Pagan Ten "Commandments"

1. Thou art God/dess.
2. As above, so below; as within so without.
3. Spirit abides in all things; words & names have power.
4. Maintain an attitude of gratitude (walk the talk).
5. Honor the ancestors, teachers, elders, and leaders.
6. All life is sacred.
7. All acts of love and pleasure are sacred.
8. Whatever you send out returns threefold.
9. Love is the law, love under will.
10. For the greatest good, an' it harm none. ~ Marian Singer

Forget pleasure and Ambition ~ Allen Ginsberg

People must value the natural world and find wonder, pleasure and amazement in it. After all a world with no nature is not a world at all ~ Charlotte.A.H

I'm going to fuck you until you fall apart...dissolve in my fingers. Then I'll soothe your shattered soul and stitch you back together until everything has new meaning and Cairo is the only word you have for pleasure, remember? ~ Jaden Wilkes

As far as he was concerned, all women wanted all men. And vice versa. What stood in the way between a man and a woman at Cafe Algiers was a few chairs, a table, maybe a door
material distance. All a man needed was the will and above all the patience to wait out a woman's scruples or help her brush them aside. As in a game of penny poker, he explained, all that matters was simply the will to keep raising the pot by a single penny each time; a single penny, not two; a single penny was easy, you wouldn't even feel it; but you had to wait for her to raise you by a penny as well, which is when you'd raise her by another, she by yet another, and so on. Seduction was not pushing people into doing things they did not wish to do. Seduction was just keeping the pennies coming. ~ Andre Aciman

The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. ~ Warren Buffett

It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace. ~ Johannes Brahms

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something. ~ Jean Paul

We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the opposite way from the ancients. The old, aristocratic form of pride was the desire to be better than others. The new, democratic form is the desire not to have anyone better than yourself. It is just as spiritually deadly and does not even carry with it the false pleasure of gloating superiority. ~ Peter Kreeft

Tonight, however, Dickens struck him in a different light. Beneath the author's sentimental pity for the weak and helpless, he could discern a revolting pleasure in cruelty and suffering, while the grotesque figures of the people in Cruikshank's illustrations revealed too clearly the hideous distortions of their souls. What had seemed humorous now appeared diabolic, and in disgust at these two favourites he turned to Walter Pater for the repose and dignity of a classic spirit.

But presently he wondered if this spirit were not in itself of a marble quality, frigid and lifeless, contrary to the purpose of nature. 'I have often thought', he said to himself, 'that there is something evil in the austere worship of beauty for its own sake.' He had never thought so before, but he liked to think that this impulse of fancy was the result of mature consideration, and with this satisfaction he composed himself for sleep.

He woke two or three times in the night, an unusual occurrence, but he was glad of it, for each time he had been dreaming horribly of these blameless Victorian works…

It turned out to be the Boy's Gulliver's Travels that Granny had given him, and Dicky had at last to explain his rage with the devil who wrote it to show that men were worse than beasts and the human race a washout. A boy who never had good school reports had no right to be so morbidly sensitive as to penetrate to the underlying cynicism of Swift's delightful fable, and th ~ Margaret Irwin

If I believed in God I would pray, beg, anything to stop time, to live in this moment with her forever. Tonight is a perfect thing in a broken world, and she is the queen of it. Her pleasure, searing white, arrows through mine, and I would let the Earth ice over to keep the sun from rising, but after hours of her, it rises anyway, sunlight staining our sheets, our skin. After, I fall asleep with Mara in my arms. ~ Michelle Hodkin

What do you seek--God? you ask with a smile.

I hesitate to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting myself a goal which everyone else has reached--and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. Who wants to be dead last among one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2% are atheists and agnostics--which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker. For myself, I enjoy answering polls as much as anyone and take pleasure in giving intelligent replies to all questions.

Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of all questions: Am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind them? That is to say: Have 98% of Americans already found what I seek or are they so sunk in everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?

On my honor, I do not know the answer. ~ Walker Percy

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself
the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent
all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action. ~ George Plimpton

Sensuality not only debases both body and mind, but dulls the keen edge of pleasure. ~ Henry Fielding

Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year's resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It's difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won't enjoy the process. If you don't find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then - unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin - you'll soon give up. But you don't really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Comrades," he said, "I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills - Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal? ~ Anonymous

On other and practical grounds we see that the theory of eternal progression is untenable, for destruction is the goal of everything earthly. All our struggles and hopes and fears and joys, what will they lead to? We shall all end in death. Nothing is so certain as this. Where, then, is this motion in a straight line - this infinite progression? It is only going out to a distance, and coming back to the centre from which it started. See how, from nebulae, the sun, moon, and stars are produced; then they dissolve and go back to nebulae. The same is being done everywhere. The plant takes material from the earth, dissolves, and gives it back. Every form in this world is taken out of surrounding atoms and goes back to these atoms. ~ Swami Vivekananda

She reshelved the sixpack and wrenched herself away to less compelling parts of the store, but it was hard to plan dinner when you felt like throwing up. She returned to the beer shelves like a bird repeating its song. The various beer cans had different decorations but all contained the identical weak low-end brew. It occurred to her to drive to Grand Rapids and buy some actual wine. It occurred to her to drive back to the house without buying anything at all. But then where would she be? A weariness set in as she stood and vacillated: a premonition that none of the possible impending outcomes would bring enough relief or pleasure to justify her current heart-racing wretchedness. She saw, in other words, what it meant to have become a deeply unhappy person. ~ Jonathan Franzen

One of life's few really reliable pleasures: to have a family you love, and to leave them for a week. ~ Mignon McLaughlin