Danny Meyer Quotes

The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity, and with respect only to the present world, is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.

People are extremely reluctant to give up that which gives them pleasure.

I'm a total pleasure seeker. I pursue anything that satisfies me. I usually get it. I have specific needs and I know what they are so I can achieve satisfaction.

I'm a hedonist.

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

I succumbed to hedonism.

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.

The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.

Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.

This body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it. It is extraordinary how it likes being indulged.

To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright

Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.

What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.

The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.

We inhabit a world where we're taught that we can have what we desire, and tend to act on it - the least we can do is admit to it when we succumb to our instincts.

I really don't have a guilty pleasure.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

People have become shallower. They view spending, entertaining, seeking leisure and enjoying as the main objectives of their life.

Appetite is essentially insatiable, and where it operates as a criterion of both action and enjoyment (that is, everywhere in the Western world since the sixteenth century) it will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression.

A man of pleasure is a man of pains.

I have no guilt about any of my pleasures.

I have lived a carnal life.

I don't believe I have a playboy life.

We live in such a self-gratifying nation, and everything is instantaneous.