Ephemeral Pleasure Quotes

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

Though sin often brings immediate pleasure, it gives no lasting joy.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.

All earthly joy begins pleasantly, but at the end it gnaws and kills.

Others may know pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. It has no more importance than a shadow following a man.

Pluck with quick hand the fruit that passes.

I don't know why, but I think the eating of food is hugely enhanced when you do it on a train. Even a simple steak and chips, when the world is rushing past outside, can take you to heaven.

So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.

The bliss even of a moment still is bliss.

When a special moment happens, I really enjoy it, but I'm over it quite quickly. I remember it, yes, but I want to chase the next one.

All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.

Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides.

And these are joys, like beauty, but skin deep.

Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?

A new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit.

A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night-fall.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

Happiness that depends mainly on physical pleasure is unstable; one day it's there, the next day it may not be.

The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty.