Pleasurable Activity Quotes & Sayings

Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV? — Ellen Willis

Let's be honest. There's not really any safe place to meet an aspiring head of a top-secret organization, trained in every manner of mind control and manipulation and bent on word domination by any means necessary. — Matt Kindt

Scientists have theorized that when Earth comes to its final days, the only life left on the planet would be in the form of microbes. — Brad Steiger

There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper. — Eric Hoffer

Once your mind becomes absolutely still, your intelligence transcends human limitations. — Jaggi Vasudev

It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree. — Alexandre Dumas

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise — Alfred North Whitehead

The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity ... When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently. — Gretchen Rubin

The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist. — Barbara Marciniak

Above him loomed a grotesque fat man [ ... ] His bedrobe was large enough to serve as a tourney pavilion, but its loosely knotted belt had come undone, exposing a huge white belly and a pair of heavy breasts that sagged like sacks of suet covered with coarse yellow hair. — George R R Martin

There were books everywhere in my house. Books were very present. I just loved books. I never understood reading as anything but a pleasurable activity from a very young age. — Lisa Lucas

Unfortunately most accidents are preventable. Planes don't fall out of the sky unless something is wrong. — Mary Schiavo

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night. — Marie Corelli

Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants ... or (again) parties. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Jayne, do NOT wiz on the werewolves. — Elle Casey

The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the Seventies' most enduringly creepy sounds. — Rob Sheffield

A lot of people are very happy to read their newspaper either on their iPad or - startlingly and faster and faster the figures go up - on their telephone, on their smart phone. — Rupert Murdoch

On average, spending time with your boss is consistently rated as the least pleasurable activity in a given day. — Tom Rath

(Take a deep breath for this next run-on sentence) I believe that two people can fall madly in love and sift that fairy-tale feeling up through the raging sands of reality to settle on top as a polished stone of true joy, where the "happily ever after" will be something two mortals are working towards and not a finished product. — Zack Oates

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The price of clothes may be low, but they are paid for with human lives, — Katharine Hamnett

...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so. — Matthew Crawford

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. — Neil Gaiman