The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.
Samuel Richardson

The richness of the world, all artificial pleasures, have the taste of sickness and give off a smell of death in the face of certain spiritual possessions.
Georges Rouault

There are no pleasures in a fight but some of my fights have been a pleasure to win.
Muhammad Ali

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.
William Temple

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is pleasure when a sore is scratched, But to be without sores is more pleasurable still. Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires, But to be without desires is more pleasurable still.
Nagarjuna

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.
William Kingdon Clifford

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.
Democritus

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
Michel de Montaigne

To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
David McCullough

To make pleasures pleasant shortens them.
Charles Buxton

To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
Stanislaw Lem

Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.
Christian Nestell Bovee

Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong.
Vita Sackville-West

True, Heaven prohibits certain pleasures; but one can generally negotiate a compromise.
Moliere

We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

We tire of those pleasures we take, but never of those we give.
John Petit-Senn

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign in solitude.
William Wordsworth

Worldly pleasures, such as flow from greatness, riches, honours, and sensual gratifications, are infinitely worse than none.
David Brainerd