c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Aspiring authors, get this through your head. Cover art serves one purpose, and one purpose only, to get potential customers interested long enough to pick up the book to read the back cover blurb. In the internet age that means the thumb nail image needs to be interesting enough to click on. That’s what covers are for.
— Larry Correia
...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be as thin as your hunger. There are other trades which you can take up: make boots, not books.
— Marquis de Sade
Why is it that women are the only ones who will write perfect men into fiction? It's strange. If a man portrayed his fictional men as archangels, the feminists would throw back their heads and howl, "UNFAIR!" but we women will create our own Mr. Darcy's and Mr. Knightley's and defy anyone who would point out their unrealistic points. The men aren't the ones crazy about Pride and Prejudice. Obviously they don't find perfect men realistic and honest enough to bother reading about. We don't write perfect women characters, do we? No. Our women all have bad tempers, or resentful hearts, or scabby pasts, or hidden fears--things that make them real. It's because we're easy on ourselves and aren't trying to boast perfection because we know we don't measure up. Then why do we hold men to a different standard?..... I'd caution all writers to make sure that your male "hero" in your story has his own flaws. You don't want a one-dimensional character. You don't want a perfect man that will drive away other men from reading the book.Look to the men in your life. The men around you. Look to your brothers and fathers and pastors and neighbors. Your uncles and the guy down the street. Goodness--look to Taylor the Latte Boy if you must, but let's cast aside the Perfect-Man syndrome.
— Rachel Heffington
We’re at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we’re aware that they’ve dominated “trans” stories for years and years. And we’re now finally at a place where we’re seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there’s this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we’re trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who’s working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension.
— Mitch Kellaway
Too often we sit back and speak platitudes of the nitty-gritty bits of writing; the editing, the story structure, the verbal sparring vs. banter, the character development, the world-building become more important to us than the tune rhythm of the tale. And when you lose the music of the story, all the footwork in the world is not going to make up for the loss of continuity and heart. We need to take a step back in our souls and conjure the image of what this story is: the notes and beats and things woven into it's fullness. See, that's what is so easy to lose sight of as we write. We forget that, in a way, this story is a full story in itself. We tend to try to build the story piece by piece, line upon line, precept upon precept, but that--as any true writer knows--is not entirely practical. A story does have its own identity. To some extent, the story exists in your mind as a whole. Its own being. To chance sounding sappy: Your story is a full piece of music waiting for you to dance it into existence. Don't make the mistake of leaving out all the music. It is tempting to want to have everything arranged to perfection so that little editing will be done. But if you are keeping in mind the way your story needs to run--feeling it and dwelling in the beauty of its passion and color and vibe--the footwork will take care of itself. Certainly it will require practice and your technicalities will need a little work--everyone's does. But you will have captured the essence and blood of the tale, and really that's the prettiest part of a dance.
— Rachel Heffington
Always carry with you a pen and a notebook or a journal to write the thoughts that flashes in a moments.
— Lailah GiftyAkita
The only prophecy the artist can make with confidence is that he and his message will be misunderstood by a world that values all the wrong things.
— Chloe Thurlow, The Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomena
Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.
— Amy Joy
Rejection is the run in the pantyhose of life.
— C.E. McLean
When it comes to writing, clarity trumps all rules.
— C.E. McLean
Clarity trumps all rules.
— C.E. McLean
Your story must told.Live a life legacy- written book or notes.This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Make time to write every day. The writing muscle is like any other muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.
— Judy Penz Sheluk, Bake, Love, Write: 105 Authors Share Dessert Recipes and Advice on Love and Writing
Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.
— George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
You think you have no ‘talent’? Write anyway. lots of people with ‘talent’ don’t actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have ‘talent.
— M. Kirin
If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence.'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.'Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page?As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick.Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly.
— David Morrell, The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material…..
— John Steinbeck
Trust your instincts. Do not confuse ego with instinct. Ego has to be set aside if you want to improve, and we should always want to improve. There is no glass ceiling on being better.
— Catherine Cruzan
If you have a machine with three or four parts, you can shake them up in a box and it's still pretty clear what's there. If you have a machine with 10,000 parts and you shake them up in a box, what you have is a box of junk.
— Gene Wolfe
Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.
— Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life
...a deadline should not prevent you from writing, but writing will help prevent you from missing your deadline. Then write a word. Then remind yourself of that again. And then write another and hey, look at you! You’re spitting in that deadline’s eye.
— Courtney Summers
Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. We can unlock our lives with a pencil tip.
— Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life
Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.
— Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life
We don’t read to observe the character from a distance. We read to become the character and experience the conflicts and rewards they are experiencing.
— Darynda Jones
I don’t get writer's block because I don’t believe in it. I believe you sit in front of the computer and force your fingers to get something on the screen.
— Janet Evanovich, How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author
Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.
— Vladimir Nabokov, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.
— Mark Twain
While the goal of a book is to create a positive emotional experience for the reader, the goal of the opening is to set the stage, to pull the reader in.
— Darynda Jones
We should be told: Write fast, write close to the bone, write for ten hours straight until you’re not thinking in words anymore, but in colors, in smells, in waves of memory. Right what you care about. Don’t write one more word you don’t care about. Don’t waste any more of your life on what does not matter to you. Write only what matters to you—those scenes, those dialogues. Get messy. Before you get neat, get very, very messy. Write until you are more alive than you have ever been before.
— Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life
Don’t wait. Writers are the only artists I know of who expect to get somewhere by waiting. Everyone knows you have to dance to be a dancer, you have to sing to be a singer, you have to act to be an actor, but far too many people seem to believe that you. don’t have to write to be a writer. So, instead of writing, they wait. Isaac Asimov said it beautifully in just six words: “It’s the writing that teaches you.” Writing is what teaches you. Writing is what leads to “inspiration.” Writing is what generates ideas. Nothing else-and nothing less. Don’t meditate, don’t do yoga, don’t do drugs. Just write.
— Daniel Quinn, Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest
Step back and scrutinize your work, to delve deep into the meaning behind the words, it will get both easier in some ways and harder in others. Either way, you need to practice everyday. You will probably get faster with time, because you learn to do this instinctively, and the writing may flow better on some days more than others, but it doesn’t get easier. And if you aren’t writing everyday, you are doing yourself and your craft a disservice. Writing is a habit. Get into the habit.
— Darynda Jones
If you can master the opening, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.
— Darynda Jones
What are minnows but brief flashes? And what are thoughts? And how do you capture a brief flash, even for a second?
— Dinty W. Moore, The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life
The key to high concept is that fresh twist. Make it a big one. Wow your reader. Force her to gasp when she comes to that part in your story.
— Darynda Jones
According to Wallace, the expectation that art amuses is a 'poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with,' since it places all of the power with the audience, sometimes breeding resentment on the part of the author. 'I can see it in myself and in other young writers,' he told McCaffery: 'this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.' Wallace expressed his 'hostility' by writing unwieldy sentences, refusing to fulfill readers' expectations, and 'bludgeoning the reader with data'--all strategies he used to wrestle back some of the power held by modern audiences.
— Dorothy M. Kennedy, The Brief Bedford Reader
Lots of times I’m not crazy about the writing, but I keep moving ahead and somehow it gets better. The important thing is to move forward.
— Janet Evanovich, How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author
You gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold.
— Diego Ramos
First drafts don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be written.
— Anonymous
I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?
— Raymond Carver
Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it’s all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
— Ben H. Winters, The Last Policeman
Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.
— Charles Dickens
One idea to a sentence is still the best advice that anyone has ever given on writing.
— Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right
The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world.
— Phillip Lopate, To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
Write drunk (on emotion); edit sober (on rationality and intention).Faulkner, reimagined by me.
— Christina Cooke
A watched pot never boils." It's the same with success. So? Throw that burner on HIGH and just keep on cooking. Dinner will be ready soon.
— Christy  Hall, The Little Silkworm
Writing is about allowing yourself to become a vessel of creativity. Writers are avatars of creation. We have tender hearts, and strong emotions. It's hard not to when you have a million different people's personalities playing out in your head.
— Sai Marie Johnson
On Writing: "A multitude of improbabilities can be forgiven as long as enough plausibility has been established.
— Danielle Ackley-McPhail
Respect and love your readers. Write for the reader.
— Janet Evanovich, How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author
My advice to writers is this:Walk, talk, breathe, laugh, cry, fall, rise, fail, succeed, run, jump, love, hate, hide, seek, learn, work, play, feel, LIVE.Then write it down.
— S. Alex Martin
The writer's silent mind is a period of intermission before orchestrating a symphony of words.
— Khaled Talib, The Little Book of Muses
One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?
— Roger Ebert, Life Itself
What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what’s it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.
— Isaac Asimov
Know something about the world, and by this I mean the world outside of books. This might require joining the Marines, or working on an oil rig or as a hash slinger at a truck stop in Kentucky. Know what it smells like out there. If everything you write smells like a library, then your prospective audience will be limited to those who like the smell of libraries.
— Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for perversity's sake, and all the better for that; the image created because an artist gets tired of reasons sometimes, and wants to dredge up some picture he's been haunted by, and parade it like a new tattoo. I go with it, readily.
— Clive Barker
Do you know what the difference is between PR and advertising? Advertising is when you say how great you are. PR is when other people say how great you are. PR is better.
— Guy Kawasaki, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. How to Publish a Book
Good writing just isn't that common.
— Eric Flint
You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.
— Neil Gaiman
Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great
—  coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
To be a writer, you must write. To be a published writer you must finish what you write and then get what you've written in front of the outside world.
— George H. Scithers, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1980
The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read.
— Guy Kawasaki, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. How to Publish a Book
An author needs a lot more than one person to succumb to his literary seductive charms, but, like Saul, he must realize that he doesn't have to--and indeed cannot--capture the hearts of every possible reader out there. No matter who the writer, his ideal intended audience is only a small faction of all the living readers. Name the most widely read authors you can think of--from Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens to Robert Waller, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling--and the immense majority of book-buyers out there actively decline to read them.
— Thomas McCormack, The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist: A Book for Writers, Teachers, Publishers, and Anyone Else Devoted to Fiction
But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.
— Elizabeth  George
Write because you love it, not because you want to become rich. Your story will be better for it.
— Lana Axe
Maybe those sailors will write bad poems, but the same men would have kept dull diaries, too. The problem has to do not with the evidence but with the witness. The point is not the adventure but the adventurer. Reality cannot be directly rendered. Reality is a pile of bricks that can assume many forms.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, A Sense Of Life
It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.
— Paul Gallico
If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.
— Markus Zusak
Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.
— Christopher Hitchens, Mortality
I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let's think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you've read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone's soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least to have some meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of -- please forgive me -- wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to 'lay it on' in the telling. Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.
— Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile
Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek, the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that is the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying.
— C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.
— Colin Nissan
I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of how long it’s going to be -- but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That’s the intrigue of doing it -- it’s a process of discovery. You get to discover what you’re going to say and what it’s going to mean.
— T.C. Boyle
...a writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.
— Anton Chekhov
...it's merely writing, but you have to adjust your ear – I speak quietly – I sob – I whisper...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
I disagree with the advice of 'write about what you know.' Write about what you need to know, in an effort to understand.
— Donald Windham
The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or so, and you run into Kafka, or Calvino, or Cortazar, and you say, well that is IT. And then you stroll through what Updike called the grottos of Ulysses, and after that you consort with Baldwin or Welty or Spencer, or Morrison, or Bellow or Fitzgerald and then back to W. Shakespeare, Esq; the champ, and all the time you feel the excitement of being in the presence of IT. And when you yourself spend the good time writing, you are not different in kind than any of these people, you are part of that miracle of human invention. So get to work. Get on with IT, no matter how difficult IT is. Every single gesture, every single stumble, every single uninspired-feeling hour, is worth IT." Richard Bausch
— Kathy Fish
Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.
— Joyce Carol Oates
...is the writer a prophet or priest - does he show the truth or serve the truth?...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...some writers closet themselves - I write wherever I am because that's where life is happening ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...it's good to know wave and particle alpha code, but more than that, the writer must go to the heart of life ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...if you want your own distinctive voice, you first have to become someone...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
— Henry Fowler
...my writing is a wild mustang - more thunderous than a lightning storm -and all my skill which I call art, is devoted to simply staying on...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
I'm going to write a novel and get it published. I'm going to do it because writing a novel is worthwhile and because I have the talent to do it.I'm going to do it because I have something important to say to the world.I refuse to let anything get in my way.
— Randy Ingermanson
Shut up, Ray.
— Henry Kuttner
I tell everyone who asks me about writing...almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough!
— Brooklyn Hudson, WISHBONE...Be Careful What You Wish For
You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think baptism by ever-escalating fire.
— Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
‎Never say you can't be a writer or a script writer, remember how well, characters in your dreams said their dialogues.
— Dipesh Nepal
Problem, purpose, conflict, goal. Use them. Think about them while you are in the planning phase of your novel; keep these elements at the back of your mind to guide you while you write. When you have written a scene, make sure they are all there, or that if one or another is missing, it is intentional and the effect is what you want.
— Phyllis A. Whitney
If I didn't care for fun and such,I'd probably amount to much.But I shall stay the way I am,Because I do not give a damn.
— Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
— Oscar Wilde
Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
— Alfred Hitchcock
Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.
— Søren Kierkegaard
Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.
— Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
I've wanted to feel pleasure to the point of insanity. They call it getting high, because it's wanting to know that higher level, that godlike level. You want to touch the heavens, you want to feel glory and euphoria, but the trick is it takes work. You can't buy it, you can't get it on a street corner, you can't steal it or inject it or shove it up your ass, you have to earn it.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.
— Walter Savage Landor, Pericles and Aspasia
My name,” I whispered in her ear, and she shivered with pleasure. “Say my name again. Not in anger, or disgust, but as you did just now. As if I am the only man in the world who can satisfy you.~Liam C.
— J.J. McAvoy, Ruthless People
Altruism is for thosewho can't endure their desires.There's a worldas ambiguous as a moan,a pleasure moanour earnest neighborsmight think a crime.It's where we could live.I'll say I love you,Which will lead, of course,to disappointment,but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.--Mon Semblable
— Stephen Dunn, Different Hours
The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.
— Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings
But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.''You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.
— Voltaire, Candide
She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.
— Émile Zola, Pot Luck
It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns
— Marquis de Sade
Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power....
— Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure.
— Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues
There is a cosmic law which says that every satisfaction must be paid for with a dissatisfaction.
— G.I. Gurdjieff
The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths
—  and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
He said it with everything he did, every touch, every caress, every physical pleasure he bestowed upon me. Give it all to me. Give me your will.
— Kitty Thomas, Comfort Food
Somewhere I’d heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the bounty this world offers me. I profit from great harvests in life and believe in the importance of seasons.
— Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
Old boys have their playthings as well as young ones
—  the difference is only in the price.
I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.
— Claude Monet
Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children.
— Ann Brashares, The Last Summer
when all of life becomes crowded with profound and weighty matters, making time to engage in trivial things becomes an even greater priority.
— Galen Beckett, The Master of Heathcrest Hall
We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
— Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays
The sweetest pleasure arises from difficulties overcome.
— Publilius Syrus, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave
JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
It was there, in particular, that I confirmed the truth that love, which we cry up as the source of our pleasures, is nothing more than an excuse for them.
— Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses
In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us. [Italian: Necessita c'induce, e non diletto.]
— Dante Alighieri, Inferno
And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.”“Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.”“Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer?”“I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it.”“Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the rest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer!”He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being.“Now,” he continued, again addressing me, “I have received the pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on, not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole universe had been destroyed and re-created.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 07: The Ball and the Cross; Manalive; the Flying Inn
Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you.
— David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays
The enemy for the fanatic is pleasure, which makes it extremely important to continue to indulge in pleasure. Dance madly. That is how you get rid of terrorism.
— Salman Rushdie
I had a moral tutor, but never saw him (the only words of his I remember are 'The three pleasures of life -drinking, smoking, and masturbation')
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
If we lose sight of pleasures and luxuries that intoxicate the senses in the most sensuous and beautiful and simplest of ways, then we`ve lost a lot.
— Savannah Page, Bumped to Berlin
It sometimes happens that pleasure blows anywhere it damn well chooses.
— Louis Aragón
Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge...the individual...can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery---which the world is filled with...
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
the promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.
— Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read
The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents - will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?
— Robert Greene, Mastery
Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger.
— Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read
... it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct...
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
LADY BRACKNELLI had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.ALGERNONI hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
The public never appears to tire of endless courses of strawberries and cream, and the theory that you run the risk of boring people with endless photo montages of the Chelsea Pensioners in their dress reds, or close-ups of a Pimm's Cup sprouting all kinda of flora, has yet to be proven. People like Wimbledon in the same way they like blue jeans or even their own spouses: for the pleasure yielded by their reliable sameness.
— Peter Bodo, Courts of Babylon
I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience.’‘It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,’ said Philip.‘But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?’‘Yes.’‘It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
This is not a "guilty pleasure" of mine, simply because I don't believe in "guilty" pleasures. Snobbery is just the public face of insecurity.
— James Kakalios, The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition
We love to love and feel loved because love is the greatest pleasure of all.
— Marty Rubin
Pretending is one of our greatest pleasures. But you have to know you're pretending.
— Marty Rubin
Every single day should be crazy fun.
— Edward Averett, Cameron and the Girls
All pleasure is a vice because seeking pleasure is what everyone does in life, and the worst vice of all is to do what everyone else does.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
State: 'It's a pleasure to be here' and offer a cup of coffee.
— Business English Magazine Poznań
May you have all the pleasure you've always craved. Nay, may you drown in it!
— Ahmed Mostafa
too much explanation can take the pleasure out of any poetry.(Preface, vii)
— Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku
Thus Epicurus also, when he designs to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind, at the same time makes use of that which he destroys.For what does he say? ‘Be not deceived, men, nor be led astray, nor be mistaken: there is no natural fellowship among rational animals; believe me. But those who say otherwise, deceive you and seduce you by false reasons.’—What is this to you? Permit us to be deceived.Will you fare worse, if all the rest of us are persuaded that there is a natural fellowship among us, and that it ought by all means to be preserved? Nay, it will be much better and safer for you.Man, why do you trouble yourself about us? Why do you keep awake for us? Why do you light your lamp? Why do you rise early? Why do you write so many books, that no one of us may be deceived about the gods and believe that they take care of men; or that no one may suppose the nature of good to be other than pleasure?For if this is so, lie down and sleep, and lead the life of a worm, of which you judged yourself worthy: eat and drink, and enjoy women, and ease yourself, and snore.And what is it to you, how the rest shall think about these things, whether right or wrong? For what have we to do with you?You take care of sheep because they supply us with wool and milk, and last of all with their flesh. Would it not be a desirable thing if men could be lulled and enchanted by the Stoics, and sleep and present themselves to you and to those like you to be shorn and milked?For this you ought to say to your brother Epicureans: but ought you not to conceal it from others, and particularly before every thing to persuade them, that we are by nature adapted for fellowship, that temperance is a good thing; in order that all things may be secured for you?Or ought we to maintain this fellowship with some and not with others? With whom then ought we to maintain it?With such as on their part also maintain it, or with such as violate this fellowship?And who violate it more than you who establish such doctrines?What then was it that waked Epicurus from his sleepiness, and compelled him to write what he did write?
— Epictetus, The Discourses
The glutton usually realizes that gout is ever ready to pounce, and that alcohol is bad for him. But possible disaster weighs light in the scale against certain pleasure.
— Marcel Proust, Jean Santeuil
What bothered me was all of the time he wasted by drumming, and all the time I wasted by listening to him drum, by taking pleasure in it, for pleasure is almost always a waste of time.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
May your wants be few and your pleasures many.
— Marty Rubin
For two thousand years or more man has been subjected to a systematic effort to transform him into an ascetic animal. He remains a pleasure-seeking animal.
— Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History
Let my worship be within the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
— Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess: The Mother of Modern Witchcraft
To live without a body!
— Joubert
It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the rest of the animals.
— Nicolás Gómez Dávila
A vine bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.
— Diogenes Laërtius, Complete Works
Feast is fun.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Party is pleasure.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Self-denial in the pursuit of purpose generates true pleasure while self-indulgence in the pursuit of pleasure generates true misery.
— Orrin Woodward
The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in, pure and unadulterated, in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. And later, when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land, nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast on such a ship, gliding on through the endless smell of the sea -- which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhilaration of breath, the end of all smells -- dissolving with pleasure in that breath.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The highest happiness is when one reaches the stage of Liberation, at which there is no more suffering. That’s genuine, lasting happiness. True happiness relates more to the mind and heart. Happiness that depends mainly on physical pleasure is unstable; one day it’s there, the next day it may not be.
— Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness
Lifelong pain, an unwanted pregnancy, and even death may be the reward for such a brief window of pleasure. What a foolish gamble!
— James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
— Niccolò Machiavelli
If my belief in the God-force-principle-thing had faltered from time to time, it was completely reaffirmed that morning when I considered how completely brilliant a creation was fermentation. From decay came a pleasure sublime enough to keep decay at bay. Only for a few minutes, perhaps, but some minutes are like no others.
— Tony Hendra, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in, pure and unadulterated, in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. And later, when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships fit days on end without ever seeing land, nothing pleased him more than the image of himself shutting high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast on such ship, gliding on through the endless shell of the sea -- which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhilaration of breath, the end of all smells -- dissolving with pleasure in that breath.
— Patrick Süskind
During my first few weeks in Italy, all my Protestant synapses were zinging in distress, looking for a task. I wanted to take on pleasure like a homework assignment, or a giant science fair project.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
The more worldly pleasure we enjoy, the less satisfied and contented we are with life.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
There is no sweeter pleasure than wandering aimlessly about.
— Marty Rubin
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do
— Walter Bagehot
Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
If one proceeds philosophically before proceeding poetically, and this is central to the philosopher, pleasure is crushed, But if one begins by having pleasure, it is like knowing how to swim: one never forgets it [Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life, trans Elizabeth Lowe & Earl Fitz, Foreword by Hélène Cixous trans Verena Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989].
— Hélène Cixous
Discipline is when we postpone the pleasure of today for the benefit of tomorrow.
— Sunday Adelaja
Primitive veddhas moulded images of women with full-blown breasts and legs. This was not to evoke sensuous pleasure, but as symbolic images related to their faith in religious fertility rites with the aim of increasing their return from harvesting and hunting. The modern artist magnifies the breasts of the woman in a painting in order to derive and to evoke erotic pleasure. That is how vulgarity enters their art.
— මාර්ටින් වික්‍රමසිංහ, Yuganthaya
The more you care for others, while denying yourself, the more pleasure life supplies you.
— Sunday Adelaja
Most people desire comfort and pleasure.
— Sunday Adelaja
When you know how, it's a pleasure to burn
— Saahil Prem
There is always pleasure in increase
— Sunday Adelaja
Yogis are not against pleasure. It is just that they are unwilling to settle for little pleasures. They are greedy.
— Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
Passing pleasures, like passing clouds, are all we have.
— Marty Rubin
Enjoying nonsense is one of life's primal pleasures.
— Marty Rubin