That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
Edgar Allan Poe

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
Dale Carnegie

The God of this world is riches, pleasure and pride.
Martin Luther

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.
Sigmund Freud

The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.
Sigmund Freud

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo da Vinci

If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.
Donald Trump

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.
Saint Augustine

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Voltaire

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
Voltaire

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
Voltaire

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen

Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
Jane Austen

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.
Pope John Paul II

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Niccolo Machiavelli

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.
Thomas A. Edison

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
Thomas A. Edison

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
George Orwell

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in.
John D. Rockefeller

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
John D. Rockefeller