Pleasant Day Quotes & Sayings

It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The Shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Peace, a commodity purchased with friendship and safety and anything comfortable and all things familiar; peace that was a pleasant melody playing through the moments of their day; a chord striking only the notes of security and agreement and understanding and order. — Dan Groat

One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather. — Anne Bronte

The old frame house down near the waterfront had never held so many people since the day it was put up. It must have been a pleasant place fifty years before: trees overhanging the limpid water, cows grazing in the meadows on both sides of the river, little frame houses like this one dotting the banks here and there.
It wasn't a pleasant place any more: garbage scows, coal yards, the river a greasy gray soup. Dead-end blocks of decrepit tenements on one side of it, lumberyards and ice-plants and tall stacks on the other.
The house was set far back from the street, hemmed in by the blank walls that rose around it.
("I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes") — Cornell Woolrich

We were born and brought up with the maxim that 'time is money'. We know exactly what money is, but what does the word time mean? The day is made up of twenty-four hours and an infinite number of moments. We need to be aware of those moments and to make the most of them regardless of whether we're busy doing something or merely contemplating life. If we slow down, everything lasts much longer. Of course, that means that washing the dishes might last longer, as might totting up the debits and credits on a balance sheet or checking promissory notes, but why not use that time to think about pleasant things and to feel glad simply to be alive? — Paulo Coelho

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts-a grace before Milton-a grace before Shakespeare-a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Fairie Queene? — Charles Lamb

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil. — Hamlin Garland

And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see. — Charles Dickens

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers. — Ray Bradbury

Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient place in which to sweat out Judgment Day. — Kurt Vonnegut

Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won't limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people's minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly. — Sadhguru

As it fell upon a day in the merry month of May, sitting in a pleasant shade which a grove of myrtles made. — Richard Barnfield

If I tape an 11-hour day, guess which parts end up on air. Not the bits when I'm pleasant, but the parts when I'm obnoxious. — Simon Cowell

Having friends around for a pleasant evening is one of life's most cherished joys as far as I am concerned. But when those with me are fellow believers, how much greater that joy is, for we know that it's rekindled, one day in eternity. — James Stewart

I ate and drank slowly as one should (cook fast, eat slowly) and without distractions such as (thank heavens) conversation or reading. Indeed eating is so pleasant one should even try to suppress thought. Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger. — Iris Murdoch

My, my." Nic's voice cut into her thoughts. "Perhaps you'd like me to leave the two of you alone so you can continue to stare at each other all day long?" Heat came to her cheeks and she tore her gaze away from Theon. "Don't be ridiculous." Nic laughed, but it wasn't filled with amusement like before. It was much drier and less pleasant this time. He leaned forward and whispered so Theon couldn't hear. "Just keep one thing in mind as you embark on this arrangement with your new bodyguard . . ." She looked at him sharply. "What's that?" He held her gaze. "He's not royal either. — Morgan Rhodes

Today there is a pleasant very light haze over the whole sky, and the sea has a misleadingly docile silvered look, as if the substantial wavelets were determined to stroke the rocks as hard as they could without showing any trace of foam. It is a compact radiant complacent sort of sea, very beautiful. There ought to be seals, the waves themselves are almost seals today, but still I scan the water in vain with my long-distance glasses. Enormous yellow-beaked gulls perch on the rocks and stare at me with brilliant glass eyes. A shadow-cormorant skims the glycerine sea. The rocks are thronged with butterflies. The temperature remains high. I wash my clothes and dry them on the lawn. I have been swimming every day
and feel very fit and salty. Still no move from Lizzie, but I am not worried. I feel happy in my silence. If the gods have some treat in store for Lizzie and me, good. If not, also good. I feel innocent and free. Perhaps it is all that swimming. — Iris Murdoch

I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and a proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand. — Joan Didion

What a strange yet pleasant day that was. So brilliant and gay without, for all the world — Louisa May Alcott

Val was eating cornflakes. She ate very little else, at home. They were light, they were pleasant, they were comforting, and then after a day or two they were like cotton wool. — A.S. Byatt

Build this day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts. Never fret at any imperfections that you fear may impede your progress. Remind yourself, as often as necessary, that you are a creature of God and have the power to achieve any dream by lifting up your thoughts. You can fly when you decide that you can. Never consider yourself defeated again. Let the vision in your heart be in your life's blueprint. Smile! — Og Mandino

and retreat from the busy and hectic day to day daily life or the desire for fresh veggies, gardening can fill that void. In addition to providing some peace for an individual it can also provide a brilliant source of nutrition and cost savings at the dinner table. The drawback that gardeners have had to face is change of seasons, insect and rodent pests as well as fertilizing problems. Gardening methods over the years has taken a pleasant turn for the better as people are trying to re-connect to the natural way of things and are taking an organic approach to raising vegetables and fruits. It is pleasing and inspiring to witness this shift from chemical saturated food going back to the natural way it was meant to be eaten. It thrills me to contribute to this global shift! I hope our children and generations after them have many blessed years of health and abundance at their dinner tables from the positive teachings — Anthony Higgins

Joao Elvas wrapped his cloak tightly around him, tucked up his legs as if he were still in his mother's womb, and snoozed in the warmth of the hay, which gave off a pleasant odour generated by the heat of his body. There are refined men and women, and sometimes not all that refined, who cannot bear such odours and who take great pains to cover any traces of their natural smell, and the day will come when artificial roses will be sprayed with the artificial scent of roses, and these refined souls will exclaim, How lovely they smell. — Jose Saramago

In his way and in his day he was a very modern father. "I want you to see all kinds," he would say to her. "I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time."
"What whole thing?"
"Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living.... — Edna Ferber

Pooh and Piglet were sitting together over breakfast at that pleasant time of the day when you know that there is much to be done but not quite yet. — David Benedictus

Eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it's well worth while to make the game as pleasant as possible. — Dorothy Draper

I f thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say, I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way Of speaking gently ... for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and, certes, brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee-and love so wrought, May be unwrought so. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yelena. What a lovely day! ... Not to hot either.
Voynitski. It would even be pleasant to hang oneself on a day like this. — Anton Chekhov

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'. — Phillip Lopate

It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty ... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever - unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement. — Bertrand Russell

Society doesn't officially recognize friendship as an institution in the way it recognizes sexual relationships, so there's no real protocol for ending one. If you've been going out, dating, or just sleeping with someone for even a month or two an you want to stop seeing him, you're expected to have a conversation with him letting him know it and giving him some bogus explanation. This conversation is seldom pleasant, and it ranges in tone from brittle adult adult discussions in coffee shops to armed standoffs in day care centers, but once it's over, you at least know your status.

Because there's no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves. — Tim Kreider

My curiosity is dying, I told Professor Mephi one pleasant day, during a seminar on Thomas Paine. I remember the sounds of a baseball game drifting thru his open window. My mentor said we had to identify the source of this malady, and urgently. I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without xperience being food without sustenance. "You need to get out more," remarked the professor. — David Mitchell

Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success. — Louisa May Alcott

Clarabelle ... Clarabelle ... You worked as Kenspeckle Grouse's assistant, did you not?'
'One of the. He fired all the others.'
'But not you?'
'He fired me on the second day, but I kept coming in. I had nowhere else to go.'
'And then you killed him.'
'Yes.'
'A Remnant squirmed inside you, and you killed Kenspeckle Grouse.'
'Yes.'
Nye grinned. 'You're hired. But I have warn you, if you try to kill me, I will dissect you and sing along to your screams.'
'Can I have Mondays off?'
'You may. — Derek Landy

All day the storm lasted. The windows were white and the wind never stopped howling and screaming. It was pleasant in the warm house. Laura and Mary did their lessons, then Pa played the fiddle while Ma rocked and knitted, and bean soup simmered on the stove.
All night the storm lasted, and all the next day. Fire-light danced out of the stove's draught, and Pa told stories and played the fiddle. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I made a pleasant discovery. You work hard at something eight hours a day, you get better. Not a lot better necessarily, but a little better, and that's just fine, because improving at golf, or anything else probably, is just a matter of making an endless series of tiny improvements. — James Patterson

Hope is not dependent on peace in the land, justice in the world, and success in the business. Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God's guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness. No one can truly say with certainty where he or she will be ten or twenty years from now. You do not know if you will be free or in captivity, if you will be honored or despised, if you will have many friends or few, if you will be liked or rejected. But when you hold lightly these dreams and fears, you can be open to receive every day as a new day and to live your life as a unique expression of God's love for humankind. There is an old expression that says, "As long as there is life there is hope." As Christians we also say, "As long as there is hope there is life. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Outside the windows the day was bright: golden sunshine, blue sky, pleasant wind ... I wanted to punch the happy day in the face, grab it by the hair, and beat it until it told me what the hell it was so happy about. — Ilona Andrews

And then suddenly I realized that I was feeling- well, that I was actually feeling. My old personality was, after months of pills and pleasant nothingness, returning. Just the littlest bit- for I had only stopped taking my little yellow pills the day before- but my essence was already asserting itself, however weakly at this point. I felt a lump in my throat, and I spent the rest of the day walking around this strange and beautiful city, remembering myself, what it used to feel like to be me, before I switched myself off, before I stopped listening to my inner voices. — Douglas Coupland

The invisible world of thought and conduct had been the frequent subject of his musings; but the other, tangible world was close to him too, spreading like a rich populous plain between himself and the distant heights of speculation. The old doubts, the old dissatisfactions, hung on the edge of consciousness; but he was too profoundly Italian not to linger awhile in that atmosphere of careless acquiescence that is so pleasant a medium for the unhampered enjoyment of life. Some day, — Edith Wharton

And then one day the walls of your house finally collapse. If the door is still standing, however, all you have to do is walk through it,and you are back inside. It's pleasant sleeping out under the stars. Never mind the rain. It can't last very long. — Paul Auster

The hill pines were sighing,
O'ercast and chill was the day;
A mist in the valley lying
Blotted the pleasant May. — Robert Bridges

Like the Sweetness of Gardenias Mother, you died 15 years ago. pain, a rapier, cut until, finally, there was just peace like the sweetness of gardenias in the crystal vase on your yellow kitchen table. so fragrant. your voice lingers in my ear reminding, scolding, guiding a pleasant mantra of tenderness, magic words that move my palms, your palms. together we are molding, helping, creating. in the mirror I see your eyes, your beautiful brown circles looking back, so radiant. "don't forget me," you whispered the day you died. I won't. — Wallace Stevens

Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn't lessened, knowing what you now know."
Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. "Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from."
The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife's peaceful profile. "Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night."
That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I've spent so much of my adult life in relationships that it's actually quite pleasant to be alone at last. I turned thirty-six the other day, which staggers me when I think about it. — Matt Roper

It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good. — Anthony Hopkins

Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented, and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful. Such attitudes are active and definite factors in creating satisfactory conditions. Watch your manner of speech then if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. — Norman Vincent Peale

I count it as an absolute certainty that in paradise, everyone naps. A nap is a perfect pleasure and it's useful, too. It splits the day into two halves, making each half more manageable and enjoyable. How much easier it is to work in the morning if we know we have a nap to look forward to after lunch; and how much more pleasant the late afternoon and evening become after a little sleep. If you know there is a nap to come later in the day, then you can banish forever that terrible sense of doom one feels at 9 A.M. with eight hours of straight toil ahead. Not only that, but a nap can offer a glimpse into a twilight nether world where gods play and dreams happen. — Tom Hodgkinson

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning. — Bel Kaufman

I commonly went ashore every day, either upon business, or to recreate myself in the fields, which were very pleasant, and the more for a shower of rain now and then, that ushers in the wet season. — William Dampier

And he relished a day at Lake George in the Adirondacks on his trip through the north with James Madison in 1791.26,27,28 "An abundance of speckled trout, salmon trout, bass and other fish with which it is stored, have added to our other amusements the sport of taking them," Jefferson had written Patsy. He had been as unhappy with Lake Champlain as he had been happy with Lake George, noting that the larger Champlain was "a far less pleasant water.29 It is muddy, turbulent, and yields little game" - all things Jefferson disliked in fishing as in life. — Jon Meacham

Christopher couldn't recall what day it was; he certainly didn't know what hour it was. It was a gray day, but there was no dullness in that gray. It was shimmering pearl-gray, of a color bounced back by shimmering water and shimmering air. It was a crimson-edged day, like a gray squirrel shot and bleeding redly from the inside and around the edges. Yes, there was the pleasant touch of death on things, gushing death and gushing life. — R.A. Lafferty

It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house. — Thomas Malthus

Climbing towards fame, recognition and popularity is very much pleasant; but all its sweetness does not count even for a day of going down. — M.F. Moonzajer

Oh begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life! There is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a pretty superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow: do not starve yourself any longer. — J.C. Ryle

Tis the land of Fancy, and is of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it, - whisk! - you clap the leaves of this book together and 'tis gone, and you are ready for every-day life, with no harm done. — Howard Pyle

Six has never been a morning person, and from the looks of it, she's not an afternoon person, either. In all honesty, she's also not a night person. If I had to guess when her most pleasant time of day occurs, it's probably while she sleeps, which may be why she hates to wake up so much. — Colleen Hoover

I think the sorts of people who honestly think that service workers should be more smiley and gracious just don't get it. They don't get it because they can take so much for granted in their own lives - things like respect, consideration, and basic fairness on the job. Benefits. Insurance. They're used to the luxury of choosing the most aesthetically pleasing item on the shelf, of caring what color their car is rather than simply whether it runs or not. They don't understand how depressing it is to be barely managing your life at any given moment of the day. So forgive me if I don't tell you to have a pleasant day with unfeigned enthusiasm when I hand you your fucking hamburger. You'll have to settle for the fake sort. — Linda Tirado

Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is - in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet.
We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.
One day it will be pleasant to remember these things. — Henry Miller

A quick run past the rabbits' execution shed, a turn around the kittens' quicklime pit, a moment's hesitation beyond the monkeys' gas-chamber
and they are gone: ay, not so long ago these canines fled away into the storm. It would be pleasant to report that that night Dr. Boycott dreamt of many a woe, and all his whitecoat-men with shade and form of witch and demon and large coffin-worm were long be-nightmared. One might even have hoped to add that Tyson the old died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform. But in fact
as will be seen
none of these things happened. Slowly the rain ceased, the grey rack blowing away and over Windermere as first light came creeping into the sky and the remaining inmates of Lawson Park woke to another day in the care and service of humanity. — Richard Adams

The sweetest type of heaven is home - nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom; an life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansions prepared for us. — J.G. Holland

It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,
beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,
so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The God Wars had not been a pleasant time for Craftsmen and Craftswomen around the world. One day, you're a simple thaumaturge, idly meddling in matters man was not meant to comprehend. The next, a collection of beings as old as humanity, with legions of followers, declare war on your "kind", and neighbours who once thought you a harmless eccentric with a fondness for mystic sigils and foul unguents see you as an affront to Creation. — Max Gladstone

In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work. — Ernest Hemingway,

Some sang too that Thror and Thrain would come back one day and gold would flow in rivers, through the mountain-gates, and all that land would be filled with new song and new laughter. But this pleasant legend did not much affect their daily business. — J.R.R. Tolkien

There may be little room for the display of this supreme qualification in the retail book business, but there is room for some. Be enterprising. Get good people about you. Make your shop windows and your shops attractive. The fact that so many young men and women enter the teaching profession shows that there are still some people willing to scrape along on comparatively little money for the pleasure of following an occupation in which they delight. It is as true to-day as it was in Chaucer's time that there is a class of men who "gladly learn and gladly teach," and our college trustees and overseers and rich alumni take advantage of this and expect them to live on wages which an expert chauffeur would regard as insufficient. Any bookshop worthy of survival can offer inducements at least as great as the average school or college. Under pleasant conditions you will meet pleasant people, for the most part, whom you can teach and form whom you may learn something. — A. Edward Newton

Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose. Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, "Something good is happening amid all this." We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God's work with us. Whatever happens - good things or bad, pleasant or problematic - we look and ask, "What might God be doing here?" We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart. Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. We — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is a fact that every day this time of year,at twenty-three seconds after 4:18, the entire Parthenon of animistic godlings and demons,trolls and sprites of dead chiefs that predated Muhammad, flex their bronzy thews and proceed to gang-piss on Assama. The earliest invaders clocked their movements by it; the lighting,the thunder, and the rain are the sole consistencies of this drowsy, turbulent land,ceaselessly full of surprises, none of them pleasant, all of them keeping you from ever feeling at home. — Millard Kaufman

As for opinions, if they're not pleasant they'd better be kept to yourself. I learned that early in life and forget it every day. — Kate Langley Bosher

The capacity of the brain to forsee the future has much to do with the fear of death.
For when the body is worn out and the brain is tired, the whole organism welcomes death. But it is difficult to understand how death can be welcome when you are young and strong, so that you come to regard it as a dread and terrible event. For the brain, in its immaterial way, looks into the future and conceives it a good to go on and on and on forever - not realizing that its own material would at last find the process intolerably tiresome. Not taking this into account, the brain fails to see that, being itself material and subject to change, its desires will change, and a time will come when death will be good. On a bright morning, after a good night's rest, you do not want to go to sleep. But after a hard day's work the sensation of dropping into unconsciousness is extraordinarily pleasant. — Alan W. Watts

My horizon lightened, I see an old woman. Who is she? Where is she from? Bent over, the ends of her boubou tied behind her, she empties into a plastic bag the left-overs of red rice. Her smiling face tells of the pleasant day she has just had. She wants to take back proof of this to her family, living perhaps in Ouakam, Thiaroye or Pikine.
Standing upright, her eyes meeting my disapproving look, she mutters between teeth reddened by cola nuts: 'Lady, death is just as beautiful as life has been. — Mariama Ba

She spent the foggy day in endless, aimless walking, for it seemed to her that if she moved quickly enough she would escape the fear that hunted her. It was a vague and shadowy fear of something cruel and stupid that had caught her and would never let her go. She had always known that it was there - hidden under the more of less pleasant surface of things. Always. Ever since she was a child.
You could argue about hunger or cold or loneliness, but with that fear you couldn't argue. It went too deep. You were too mysteriously sure of its terror. You could only walk very fast and try to leave it behind you. — Jean Rhys

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway ?

Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair ! — Charlotte Bronte

Most Americans think of Rosa Parks as a demur, pleasant-enough seamstress who backed into history by being too tired to get out of her seat on a bus one day, in reality she had been trained in nonviolence spirit and tactics at a famous institution, Highlander Folk School. It seems to be a difficult concept for most of us that peace is a skill that can be learned. We know war can be learned, but we seem to think that one becomes a peacemaker by a mere change of heart. (23) — Mahatma Gandhi

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You're trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren't very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product. — Madeleine Albright

It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly. — Jerome K. Jerome

Kissing Simon was pleasant. It was a gentle sort of pleasant, like lying in a hammock on a summer day with a book and a glass of lemonade — Cassandra Clare

As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought. — John Lancaster Spalding

Perhaps this need to lie cost me something at first: but I soon realized that what are supposedly the worst things (lying, to mention only one) are hard to do only when you have never done them; but that each of them becomes, and so quickly! easy, pleasant, sweet in the repetition, and soon a second nature. Thus, as in each instance when an initial disgust is overcome, I ended by enjoying the dissimulation itself, savoring it as I savored the functioning of my unsuspected faculties. And I advanced every day into a richer, fuller life, toward a more delicious happiness. — Andre Gide

We make our days pleasant or miserable. If we insist on being miserable, irritable and nasty, more than likely the day will give us exactly what we give it. A day is too valuable to waste on misery and unhappiness. — Iyanla Vanzant

I am eternal. I am the night. I am the day. I am forever. And who are you?"
"I'm Skulduggery Pleasant."
"Oh, hell.
(The Horror Writers' Halloween Ball) — Derek Landy

Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself. — Elbert Hubbard

He stepped to her again, laid his lips on her brow. "But I want children with you, my lovely Eve. One day."
"One day being far, far in the future. Like, I don't know, say a decade when ... Hold on. Children is plural."
He eased back, grinned. "Why, so it is
nothing slips by my canny cop."
"You really think if I ever actually let you plant something in me
they're like aliens in there, growing little hands and feet." She shuddered. "Creepy. If I ever did that, popped a kid out
which I think is probably as pleasant a process as having your eyeballs pierced by burning, poisonous sticks, I'd say, 'Whoopee, let's do this again?' Have you recently suffered head trauma?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Could be coming. Any second. — J.D. Robb

And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Upperworld people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the eld. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same. — H.G.Wells

I recall vividly the night before one of my own early surgeries, an eight-hour affair that would alter my body permanently. I was twenty-seven and unmarried at the time. Late in the evening a pleasant elderly woman, a technical aide, had come to my hospital room to shave my abdomen in preparation for the procedure. As she went about this humble task with great skill, she had asked me about the next day's surgery. Filled with resentment, self-pity, and a sense of victimhood, I told her what was planned and burst into tears. She had seemed quite surprised. "How would YOU feel if they were going to do this to YOU tomorrow?" I asked her angrily. she had taken my question literally and had thought it over. Then, patting me gently, she had said, "If I needed it to live, I would be glad for the help." Her answer had changed everything. — Rachel Naomi Remen

O, pleasant is the welcome kiss
When day's dull round is o'er;
And sweet the music of the step
That meets us at the door. — Joseph Rodman Drake

There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody country; their halting alacrity of movement, their pleasant business, making bread all day with uncouth gesticulation; their air, gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit of romance into the tamest landscape. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I wondered what a man I had encountered the day before on the plane en route to Chicago's O'Hare airport would have made of this. As he tried to push through a crowded aisle, he said loudly: "Life is never easy. And it's never pleasant." I couldn't let this go. I looked up at him from my seat and said, "I do hope life gives you cause to change that opinion. Otherwise you may find that opinion walking ahead of you, giving you more and more reasons to believe it. — Robert Moss

Palgolak was a god of knowledge ... He was an amiable, pleasant deity, a sage whose existence was entirely devoted to the collection, categorization, and dissemination of information ... Palgolak's library ... did not lend books, but it did allow readers in at any time of the day or night, and there were very, very few books it did not allow access to. The Palgolaki were proselytizers, holding that everything known by a worshipper was immediately known by Palgolak, which was why they were religiously charged to read voraciously. But their mission was only secondarily for the glory of Palgolak, and primarily for the glory of knowledge, which was why they were sworn to admit all who wished to enter into their library. — China Mieville

He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." Bob — Charles Dickens

Unexpected and pleasant surprises occur every day...random kindnesses from a stranger; would-be tragic accidents narrowly avoided; sicknesses healed.... We will notice if we look. We will see good sprinkled liberally over every day if we are open. — Steve Goodier

Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,
call it which you will,
is a book ... — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful. — Norman Vincent Peale

*After Skulduggery kills Valkyrie*
Skulduggery: This has been a good day so far, all things considered, I have the location of the Grotesquey and I got to kill Valkyrie, which admittedly is something I've been wanting to do since I met her, she can be incredibly annoying
Scapegrace: Um
Skulduggery: She hardly ever shut up, I pretended to be the friends with her, but honestly, I just felt sorry for the poor girl. Not the brightest you know.
Valkyrie: You're such a goon. — Derek Landy

Why can't I remember our family Christmas, or a warm spring day, or anything that might have been pleasant? It is as though the filter of recall is itself altered, so that it blocks out everything but the darkest colors of the spectrum. — Caroline Kettlewell

Only don't go to the other extreme and delve like slaves. Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty. — Louisa May Alcott

All the shall stand about the God of glory, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love which are poured forth from thence, as the flowers on the earth in a pleasant spring day open their bosoms to the sun to be filled with his warmth and light, and to flourish in beauty and fragrancy by his rays. Every saint is as a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrancy and sweet odor which they all send forth, with which they fill that paradise. — Jonathan Edwards

Of course, eating these food items is not what I might describe as pleasant, since they're tough and scorched and moistureless from their all-day cooking on high-temperature rollers. Sometimes biting through a burrito's thick tortilla casing can feel like chewing through your own toe calluses." "That's an image that's going to linger. — Nathan Hill

Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. — Virginia Woolf