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pleasures quotes

  • One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

    -Jane Austen
      Emma, ch.9.

  • God Almighty first planteda garden; and indeed, it isthe purest of human pleasures.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.46,'Of Gardens'.

  • But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment whitethen melts for ever.

    - Robert Burns
      'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

  • Of all the pleasures in the world, travel is (in my opinion) the sweetest and most delightful.

    -Thomas Coryate
    Coryat's Crudities Hastily Gobled Up in Five Moneths' Travells.

  • I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'The Good Morrow', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks: With silken lines, and silver hooks. See Marlowe 553:17, Raleigh 677:98.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'The Bait', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.

    -John Dryden
      Tyrannic Love, act 4, sc.1.

  • Fairest Isle, all isles excelling, Seat of pleasures, and of loves; Venus here will choose her dwelling, And forsake her Cyprian groves. 291

    -John Dryden
    King  Arthur, act 5,'Song of  Venus'.

  • The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth, Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet, Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, Eternity of pleasures; no restoratives Like to a constant woman.

    -John Ford
      The Broken Heart, act 2, sc.2.

  • In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.

    - Edward Gibbon
    ^88  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.6.

  • I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

    - Aldous Leonard Huxley
      Limbo,'Cynthia'.

  • Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Rasselas, ch.26.

  • No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,  Jun. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

  • It isverystrange, and verymelancholy, thatthepaucityof humanpleasuresshould persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
    Quoted in Mrs Piozzi  Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).

  • Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems, 'Lamia', pt.1, l.127^8.

  •    Never shall my sad eyes again behold Those pleasures which my thoughts did then unfold.

    - Aemilia Lanyer
    Salve Deus Ex Judaeorum,'The Description of Cooke-ham'.

  • Fashion is free speech, and one of the privileges, if not always one of the pleasures, of a free world.

    - Alison Lurie
    The Language of Clothes.

  • Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle. See Raleigh 677:98.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love' (published1599).

  • Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball: And tear our pleasures with rough strife, Through the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'To His Coy Mistress' (published1681), closing lines.

  • Pleasures of worse natures Are gladly entertained, and they that shun us Practice in private sports the stews would blush at.

    - Philip Massinger
      Of the theatre. The Roman  Actor, act1, sc.1.

  •    Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures Whilst the landscape round it measures, Russet lawns and fallows grey, Where the nibbling flocks do stray, Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 L'Allegro, l.69^76.

  • Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  •    And the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me.

    -John Milton
      Satan. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.9, l.119^21.

  • Le Ciel de  fend, de vrai, certains contentements; Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements. True, heaven forbids us certain pleasures; But we always find a way to arrange things.

    -Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molie'  re
      Le Tartuffe, act 4, sc.5.

  • One of the pleasures of middle age isto find out that one right, and that one was much righter than one knew at say17 or 23.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
    WAS1934  TheABC of Reading, ch.1.

  • If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. See Marlowe 553:17.

    - Sir Walter Raleigh
    c.1592  'The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd', a response to Marlowe's 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love', attributed to Raleigh.

  • Praise the sports of the land And water, each one The bath by the beach, or the yacht on the sea But of all the sweet pleasures Known under the sun; A good game of Croquet's the sweetest to me.

    -Thomas Mayne Reid
      Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Phillis, why shou'd we delay Pleasures shorter than the day?

    - Edmund Waller
      'To Phillis'.

  • For my part, I will have only those glorious manly pleasures of being very drunk and very slovenly.

    -William Wycherley
      The CountryWife, act1, sc.1.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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