This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.
Art | Consciousness | Pleasure | Service | Art |
Differences of opinion give me but little concern; but it a real pleasure to be brought into communication with anyone who is in earnest, and who really looks to God's will as his standard of right and wrong, and judges of actions according to their greater or lesser conformity.
Conformity | God | Little | Looks | Opinion | Pleasure | Right | Will | Wrong |
Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the second an oar or sail. The first speaks to the ere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.
Knowledge | Literature | Pleasure | Power | Reason | Sympathy | Teach | Understanding |
Jung equates the unconscious with the soul, and so when we try to live fully consciously in an intellectually predictable world, protected form all mysteries and comfortable with conformity, we lose our everyday opportunities for the soulful life. The intellect wants to know; the soul likes to be surprised. Intellect, looking outward, wants enlightenment and the pleasure of a burning enthusiasm. The soul, always drawn inward, seeks contemplation and the more shadowy, mysterious experience of the underworld.
Conformity | Contemplation | Enlightenment | Enthusiasm | Experience | Life | Life | Pleasure | Soul | Wants | World | Contemplation | Intellect |
Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
Admiration | Envy | Fame | Mankind | Pleasure |
No profit grows where is no pleasure taken; in brief, sir, study what you most affect.
A person who wants approval is disturbed and irritated if someone questions his attitudes and opinions. But a wise man seeks truth and therefore feels pleasure if someone raises objections since this helps him correct his mistakes.
Take pleasure in what you have and you never have to envy anyone else. The best anyone can obtain from their possessions, experiences, accomplishments, skills or fame is happiness. If you have happiness from what you do and have, no one can really gain anything more than what you already have.
Envy | Fame | Pleasure | Possessions | Happiness |
Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.
Change | Contemplation | Existence | Inclination | Nature | Non-existence | Pleasure | Contemplation |
There are two types of pleasure before G‑d. The first is from the complete nullification of evil and its transformation from bitterness to sweetness and from darkness to light by the perfectly righteous. The second [pleasure] is when evil is repelled while it is still at its strongest and mightiest... through the efforts of the "intermediate man" (beinoni)... As in the analogy of physical food, in which there are two types of delicacies that give pleasure: the first being the pleasure derived from sweet and pleasant foods; and the second, from sharp and sour foods, which are spiced and prepared in such a way that they become delicacies that revive the soul.
Bitterness | Darkness | Evil | Light | Pleasure |
All knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
Impression | Knowledge | Pleasure | Wonder |
Frederick II, `Frederick the Great’ NULL
The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
So, often in the course Of life's few fleeting years, A single pleasure costs The soul a thousand tears.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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?
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
Creed | Happy | Optimism | People | Philosophy | Pleasure | Reason | Worth | Happiness |
The gentleman trains his eyes so that they desire only to see what is right, his ears so that they desire to hear only what is right, his mind so that it desires to think only what is right. When he has truly learnt to love what is right, his eyes will take greater pleasure in it than in the fine colours; his ears will take greater pleasure than in the fine sounds; his mouth will take greater pleasure than in the fine flavours; and his mind will feel keener delight than in possession of the world. When he has reached this stage, he cannot be subverted by power or the love of profit. He cannot be swayed by the masses. He cannot be moved by the world. He follows this one thing in life; he follows it in death. This is what is called constancy of virtue.
Constancy | Desire | Love | Mind | Pleasure | Power | Will | Think |