Pleasanter Quotes & Sayings

Few things can be pleasanter than riding a reliable broomstick through a moony autumn night. It is best of all when home is at the end of the journey. — Barbara Willard

So you see [the act of teaching] teaches me also, and is as good as a general review of what I've learned, in a pleasanter way than going over it alone. — Louisa May Alcott

(And did I mention how in summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan and dumped onto the ground, huge piles of pulpy fruit lying in the dirt, with dirty women steeping them in salt water and children squatting to defecate behind the clusters? Did I mention how the reek of the fig women mixed with pleasanter smells of almond trees, mimosa, laurel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exactly, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you'll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir ... ) — Jeffrey Eugenides

Song in the Manner of Housman O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera ... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera ... — Ezra Pound

It is all very well to say that all princesses are good and beautiful and charming; but this is usually a determined optimism on everybody's part rather than the truth. After all, if a girl is a princess, she is undeniably a princess, and the best must be made of it; and how much pleasanter it would be if she were good and beautiful. There's always hope that if enough people believe as though she is, a little of it will rub off. — Robin McKinley

Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbow-room is pleasanter
and much safer. — Robert A. Heinlein

Don't be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in. — L.M. Montgomery

Political success is a good deal pleasanter than political failure, but it too brings its problems. — Margaret Thatcher

Pleasanter surprise," he managed, backing us away from the threshold. There's the idea. I pushed him gently against the wall and started tugging on his shirt.
"About to get even pleasanter," I murmured against his neck as my fingers found the drawstring of his pants.Bad grammar is such a turn- on. — Diana Peterfreund

If the pupil proves to be of so perverse a disposition that he would rather listen to some idle tale than to the account of a glorious voyage or to a wise conversation, when he hears one; if he turns away from the drum-beat that awakens young ardour in his comrades, to listen to another tattoo that summons him to a display of juggling; if he does not fervently feel it to be pleasanter and sweeter to return from a wrestling-match, dusty but victorious, with the prize in his hand, than from a game of tennis or a ball, I can see no other remedy that for his tutor to strangle him before it is too late, if there are no witnesses. — Michel De Montaigne

Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of the world; but I can't help it if I'm pleasanter. It's constitutional. — Mary Elizabeth Braddon

There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for the children and the family in general. — Nina Bawden

To illustrate the marked atmospheric contrast between the two cities, the writer Frank Carpenter observed that in New York, "a streetcar will not wait for you if you are not just at its stopping point. It goes on and you must stand there until the next car comes along. In Washington people a block away signal the cars by waving their hands or their umbrellas. Then they walk to the car at a leisurely pace, while the drivers wait patiently and the horses rest." While the capital might lack "the spirit of intense energy" that animated New York, Carpenter concluded that Washington, with its broad, clean streets and fine marble buildings (and its shanties generally hidden from view), offered "the pleasanter place in which to live. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The water of life was given to us to make us see for a while that we are more nearly men and women, more nearly kind and gentle and generous, pleasanter and stronger than without its vision there is any evidence we are. — Bernard DeVoto

She touched his face and tied his hair back for him. Her hands were cool. He had never felt anything pleasanter in all his life than the touch of her hands. He reached out for her hand. She was not there, she had gone. — Ursula K. Le Guin

steadier, pleasanter, honester, smarter young fellow I never had in this stable. I can trust his word and I can trust his work; — Anna Sewell

I don't see why God made any night; day is so much pleasanter ... — Louisa May Alcott

As he lay there, fragments of past states of emotion, fugitive felicities of thought and sensation, rose and floated on the surface of his thoughts. It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one's self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in its fulness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie. — Edith Wharton

I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more ... though I know that IS the noblest ambition ... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me ... to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born. — L.M. Montgomery

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

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library. — Walter Savage Landor

Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere. — P. J. O'Rourke

Hypocrisy is folly. It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of being what he is not. — Lord David Cecil

I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston. — Anthony Trollope

The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself. — Johann Gottfried Herder

It occurred to me that prison life might actually be pleasanter than groaning away my sleepless nights in hellish dread of the "realities of life" as led by human beings. — Osamu Dazai

I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

Do we say that one must never willingly do wrong, or does it depend upon the circumstances? Is it true, as we have often agreed before, that there is no sense in which wrongdoing is good or honourable? Or have we jettisoned all our former convictions in these last few days? Can you and I at our age, Crito, have spent all these years in serious discussions without realizing that we were no better than a pair of children? Surely the truth is just what we have always said. Whatever the popular view is, and whether the alternative in pleasanter than the present one or even harder to bear, the fact remains that to do wrong is in every sense bad and dishonourable for the person who does it. — Socrates

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair. — Thomas Jefferson

I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it - I defy him - if he finds me going there in good temper, year after year, and saying, 'Uncle Scrooge, how are you?' If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something. — Charles Dickens

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp. — John Steinbeck

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist. — Thomas Carlyle

One must submit, like a traveller who has to ascend a mountain: if the mountain was not there, the road would be both shorter and pleasanter; but there it is, and he must get over it. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on. — Stephen Sondheim

It is a still stranger thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. It is far pleasanter than writing reviews of famous novels. — Virginia Woolf

Pornography, in my opinion, has been much misunderstood, for it doesn't develop sex fiends and send them roaming alleyways - it is an anodyne for the sexually oppressed and unrequited, for what is the aim of pornography if not to stimulate masturbation? And surely masturbation is the pleasanter alternative for men "on the muscle," as they say in horse-breeding circles. — Truman Capote

I wanted to say to Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy, and wherever you go, Elvis, we want to say we've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you. — Ed Sullivan

I long ago learned that one's illnesses are both pleasanter and more useful if one keeps their exact nature to himself: one's friends, uncertain as to the cause of one's queer behavior and strange sufferings, impute to one a mysteriousness often subtly convenient. — John Barth

It is my considered opinion that the human race (soi disant) is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter. — Noel Coward

I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays. — Abraham Lincoln

Sure there's different roads from this to Dungarvan* - some thinks one road pleasanter, and some think another; wouldn't it be mighty foolish to quarrel for this? - and sure isn't it twice worse to thry to interfere with people for choosing the road they like best to heaven? — Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down the rabbit-hole
and yet
and yet
... — Lewis Carroll

We live in an age when selfinterest alone seems to determine all of man's acts - and what empathy, what emotion, what enthusiasm can ever grow out of self interest. It is pleasanter to dream of those times of dedication, sacrifice, and heroism that used to be, and that have left honorable traces upon the earth. — Germaine De Stael

The Nazi leaders cannot be voided from human society simply because it is pleasanter or more convenient to regard them now as outside the pale of humanity. — Roger Manvell

This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it. — Ugo Betti

The building has settled into itself so that when you walk down the aisle, you can hear it yielding to the burden of your weight. It's a pleasanter sound than an echo would be, an obliging, accommodating sound. You have to be there alone to hear it. Maybe it can't feel the weight of a child. But if it is still standing when you read this, and if you are not half a world away, sometime you might go there alone, just to see what I mean. After a while I did begin to wonder if I liked the church better with no people in it. I know they're planning to pull it down. They're waiting me out, which is kind of them. — Marilynne Robinson

Love is a great thing, a good above all others, which alone maketh every heavy burden light, and equaliseth every inequality. For it beareth the burden and maketh it no burden, it maketh every bitter thing to be sweet and of good taste. The surpassing love of Jesus impelleth to great works, and exciteth to the continual desiring of greater perfection. Love willeth to be raised up, and not to be held down by any mean thing. Love willeth to be free and aloof from all worldly affection, lest its inward power of vision be hindered, lest it be entangled by any worldly prosperity or overcome by adversity. Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing loftier, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing fuller or better in heaven nor on earth, for love was born of God and cannot rest save in God above all created things. — Thomas A Kempis

We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It's trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But there's no help for it till we know our men. Lay to, and whistle for a wind, that's my view. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. — Mark Twain

I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the fountains and take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous recreation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria. — Mark Twain

We could imagine nothing pleasanter than to spend all of our lives digging for relics of the past. — Heinrich Schliemann

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless. — Michel De Montaigne

In my life there have been several individuals whose presence made it easier for me to think, pleasanter to make my responses. — Isaac Asimov

It is a dear and lovely disposition, and a most valuable one, that can brush away indignities and discourtesies and seek and find the pleasanter features of an experience. — Mark Twain

Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think- as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one's own latent greatness — Italo Svevo

Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than a shovel. — Mark Twain