Pleasure quotes

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV, stanza CLXXVIII (178), Project Gutenberg #5131. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods” opens Byron’s famous stanza on solitude, shore, sea and nature. It remains poetic Romantic-era expression rather than scientific evidence about nature exposure or mental health.

Lady Windermere’s Fan.

The Sense of Beauty (1896), Part I, §11, ‘The definition of beauty,’ Project Gutenberg #26842; the represented section begins on printed page 49. ‘Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing’ is Santayana’s summary definition after describing beauty as positive, intrinsic and objectified value. This remains historical naturalistic aesthetic theory / philosophical psychology, not a modern empirical test proving an object objectively beautiful.

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, saying III, Hastings Crossley translation.

Francis Bacon, 'Of Studies,' essay L in the 1625 Essays; independently checked against the validated 1884 Works of Francis Bacon, Volume I scan at printed page 55 / scan leaf 183. The opening sentence names delight, ornament and ability as uses of study; it remains early-modern essay argument rather than educational-outcome research.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890 Lippincott magazine text, Chapter 2; Lord Henry states the temptation paradox while influencing Dorian in Basil Hallward’s garden.

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 58.

Soliloquies in England, “War Shrines”; the sentence follows a contrast between strained worldliness and a more festive acceptance of life.

The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book I pairs learning with the pleasure of welcoming distant friends.

Emma, Volume I, Chapter IX, scan-backed 1816 John Murray first edition on Wikisource. Emma tells her father that one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other while explaining why his grandchildren enjoy rough play that he himself cannot comprehend; this is Emma Woodhouse’s fictional dialogue, not Austen speaking autobiographically.

Utilitarianism, Chapter II, “What Utilitarianism Is,” Project Gutenberg #11224. Mill’s “human being dissatisfied / pig satisfied” comparison occurs in his argument that some pleasures associated with higher faculties have greater quality, alongside his appeal to dignity and competent judges. It is nineteenth-century normative moral philosophy, not an empirical measure of happiness or human worth.

Letter discussing education and reading, preserved in collections of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s correspondence.

The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book I opens by connecting learning with steady practice.

The Warden, Project Gutenberg #619. The narrator describes Mr Harding settling into Tom Towers’s comfortable rooms after an exhausting day; this is comic fictional narration, not a claim about universal happiness.

Signs of Change, lecture “Dawn of a New Epoch”; Project Gutenberg #3053. The sentence occurs inside Morris’s proposed organization of socially useful labor.

Anne of Green Gables; Anne describes deliberate enjoyment as a practiced attitude toward experience.

Laelius on Friendship, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh in Project Gutenberg’s Treatises on Friendship and Old Age.

The Prophet, “On Joy and Sorrow.”

The World I Live In (1908), Chapter I, “The Seeing Hand,” printed page 5, Project Gutenberg #27683. Keller calls the hand her “feeler” reaching through isolation and darkness to seize pleasure and activity, describing her own tactile engagement with the world rather than prescribing one universal sensory hierarchy.

Character Building, “Helping Others,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The statement is moral advice inside a school address and is not presented as clinical treatment for unhappiness.

Plato, Gorgias, approximately Stephanus 491d–e, Socrates answering Callicles’s question about ruling oneself. Callicles promptly disputes the value of temperance. Full sentence in Benjamin Jowett’s English translation, Project Gutenberg #1672, within the Gorgias dialogue proper (not Jowett’s introductory essay). Socrates is the local dramatic speaker; the line is not Plato’s autobiographical speech. An ancient ethical argument, not experimental mental-health evidence.

Signs of Change, lecture “Useful Work versus Useless Toil,” beginning on printed page 141, Project Gutenberg #3053. Morris defines the hope that makes work worth doing as hope of rest, useful product and pleasure in the work itself, then summarizes those three elements in the retained sentence. It remains socialist moral and economic argument about labor, not a universal workplace-satisfaction metric.