In general, then, pleasure is not good, because every pleasure is a perceptible process of coming into its nature; but no coming-into-being belongs to the same class as the ends we pursue.
pleasurequotes
Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.
Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus’ phrase, but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder.
anger / art / Heraclitus / pleasure / virtue
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.
We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
Theoretical considerations require that what is to-day the object of a phobia must at one time in the past have been the source of a high degree of pleasure.
past / phobia / pleasure / Theoretical
Thus pleasure itself, also becoming a right, lost its aggressive futility.
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
We take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something.
Our greatest pleasure consists in being admired; but those who admire us, even if they have every reason to do so, are slow to express their sentiments. Hence he is the happiest man who, no matter how, manages sincerely to admire himself — so long as other people leave him alone.
admire / Alone / happiest / pleasure / sentiments