Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.
Benjamin Disraeli

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Bertrand Russell

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
Bertrand Russell

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
James Joyce

Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.
Scott Adams

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
Emily Bronte

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
Charles Baudelaire

The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
Charles Baudelaire

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.
Charles Baudelaire

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.
Charles Baudelaire

Everything I do is for the pleasure of Allah.
Cat Stevens

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.
Thomas Hardy

Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.
Thomas Hobbes

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.
David Foster Wallace

Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
Alvin Ailey

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.
Mortimer Adler

Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.
Mortimer Adler

If one wants another only for some self-satisfaction, usually in the form of sensual pleasure, that wrong desire takes the form of lust rather than love.
Mortimer Adler

Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable.
Mortimer Adler

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
Zora Neale Hurston