Pleasure Pain Quotes & Sayings

This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. — Alan W. Watts

Sex should be a perfect balance of pain and pleasure. Without that symmetry, sex becomes a routine rather than an indulgence. — Marquis De Sade

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting. — Peter Kreeft

Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family; they become less obvious when caught up in a romantic life that mirrors, magnifies, and perpetuates one's own mercurial emotional life and temperament. It has been with my pleasure, and not-inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth - from my husband, the man with whom I had lived for almost a decade. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Sacrificing earth to paradise is like leaving your fortune to a corpse. I'm not that stupid. Duped by the Infinite! I am nothing; I call myself Count Nothing, the senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Will I after my death? No. What am I? A little dust surrounding an organism. What do I have to do on this earth? I have the choice of pain or pleasure. Where will pain lead me? To nothing. But I will have suffered. Where will pleasure lead me? To nothing. But I will have enjoyed. My choice is made. I must eat or be eaten, and I choose to eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. That's my philosophy. — Victor Hugo

Whoever feels pain in hearing a good character of his neighbor, will feel a pleasure in the reverse. And those who despair to rise in distinction by their virtues, are happy if others can be depressed to a level of themselves. — Benjamin Franklin

Pleasure and Pain participate equally in moulding character. — Abhijit Naskar

Of course, being open and vulnerable will lead us to, sometimes, experience pain. But what is pain? It is simply a feeling. It is not forever. If you get pain from some person or thing too many times, you can always walk away. To risk a lifetime without pleasure simply to avoid pain is ludicrous. — Vironika Tugaleva

God felt Day tilt his hips upward; driving God in deeper and he knew his lover was crossing over that thin line between pain and indescribable pleasure. God's balls had practically crawled up inside of him. He tried to think about anything that might ward of his orgasm, but Day's ass was squeezing him so damn tight, it was impossible not to focus on the sensation. God — A.E. Via

Your ability to withstand pain is your claim to fame. It is ascetic, holy. It is self-control. It is masochism, and masochism pleasurable to many, but we don't like to think about that. We don't like to think that a person could have a twisted autoerotic life going on, be both a top and a bottom, and experience both at once: the pleasure of beating the hell out of a body shackled at the wrists, and the pleasure of being the body and knowing we deserve each blow. — Marya Hornbacher

The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

The worldly life means a factory of pain and pleasure. — Dada Bhagwan

If you want to experience all of the successes and pleasure in life, you have to be willing to accept all the pain and failure that comes with it. — Mat Hoffman

The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee! — Paramahansa Yogananda

All at once it hit him: this was power too, just as surely as smashing your fist into someone's face, just as surely as putting a hammer through someone's skull. The power to make another person crazy with pleasure instead of fear and pain, to have every cell in another person's body at your thrall. — Poppy Z. Brite

If it doesn't work out there will never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain. — Jimmy Buffett

What happened was pain and pleasure and shock and satisfaction all rolled into one. Pain as he withdrew and thrust over and over again past the soreness of her newly opened womanhood. Pleasure because it was more wonderful, more exhilirating, than any other sensation she had ever experienced. Shock because she had not expected such a deep and vigorous and prolonged invasion of her body. Satisfaction because now, before it was too late, he was her lover. Because she would always be able to remember him as her lover — Mary Balogh

In order to feed on what it needed, a poet's soul sought that which it'd never find, or in Dad's case (just a guess but I suspected a good one), sabotaged what it had in order to feed that need. There had to be yearning. There had to be melancholy. There had to be pain mixed with pleasure, but the pain had to come stronger than the pleasure, knowing it never would get what it really needed. No — Kristen Ashley

I love good and pleasure, I hate evil and pain, I want to be happy and I am not mistaken in believing, that people, angels and even demons have those same inclinations. — Nicolas Malebranche

Even in the greatest afflictions, we ought to testify to God, that, in receiving them from his hand, we feel pleasure in the midst of the pain, from being afflicted by Him who loves us, and whom we love. — John Wesley

I don't think I could ever live with either a man or a woman for a long time. Male and female are attractive to my mind, but when it comes to the sexual act I am afraid. In every situation I need a lot of stimulation before I am conquered by the forces of passion and lust. But confusion, before and after, is the dominant factor.
I dreamed many times about a mature man with experience who would have the vigour of a boy but an adult's polished methods. Strangely enough, I also dreamed about women of my mother's age who were ideal lovers. These dreams came superimposed on one another. Sometimes the masculine element was dominant, sometimes the feminine one. At other times I wasn't sure. I saw a female body with male organs or a male body with female ones. These pictures, blended together in my mind, occasionally brought pleasure but more often pain. — Adam Thirlwell

The refreshing pleasure from the first view of nature, after the pain of illness, and the confinement of a sick-chamber, is above the conceptions, as well as the descriptions, of those in health. — Ann Radcliffe

Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection — Nir Eyal

I fucking want to do things Mercy. I want your pleasure, but God, I want your fucking pain, — Lucian Bane

Mixture of pleasure and pain," he muttered. "Always does the trick. — Douglas Adams

A Puritan is not against bullfighting because of the pain it gives the bull, but because of the pleasure it gives the spectators. — H.L. Mencken

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I found a brief piece of by Antonio Vivaldi around this time which became my 'Pinhead Mood Music'. Called Al Santo Sepolcro (At The Holy Sepulchre), it opens more like a piece of modern orchestral music, and although it it moves toward Vivaldi's familiar harmonies, there is always the threat that it will fall back into dissonance. The piece progresses in an exquisite agony, poised on a knife edge between beauty and disfigurement, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Perfect. — Doug Bradley

A tease is a con. You press a spot because you know that it can be pressed, and while the sucker is feeling the pleasure or the pain resulting from the pressure, you take something from him ... A flirt doesn't do that. A flirt does a dance within the context of giving pleasure. Referring to this, referring to that. And suddenly, following the references, you find a little surprise. Nothing enormous. Nothing like 'Feed on me.' Nothing like that. Something small with a bow on it. It's a pleasure. A surprise, and a *gift*. — George W. S. Trow

All the overpowering blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery. — Jane Austen

Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into action in which there is no great joy; it would take sadism to turn it into something pleasurable; unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind. — Marcel Proust

We see, at least with intellect, that beyond both true and false is truth; that there is beauty beyond our present views on the beautiful and ugly; that pleasure-pain can now alike be transcended, and that some day we shall truly see that 'form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form'. — Christmas Humphreys

This is ten percent luck, Twenty percent skill, Fifteen percent power of will, Five percent pleasure, Fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name. — Mike Shinoda

The most rapturous delights you have ever had - in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace - are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1-3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ's redemption of us from evil and death. — Timothy Keller

We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us while they afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge or in doing good to our fellow-creatures, is a kind of benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance and answer none of these intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we get rid of them. Death is that way. — Benjamin Franklin

When his hand came down across my bottom the first time I thought I was going to die. But the pain passed, transmuted as if my some alchemical wizardry, and for a moment I experienced a surreal satisfaction in being bent over in this way without rights or choices, past or future. In pain you are living in the present and as the pain passes there is pleasure from having endured the pain. — Chloe Thurlow

How does your experience of one sense affect all the others? In addition to being the conduits of pleasure and pain, your senses are the midwives of intelligence. — Michael J. Gelb

Thankfully, the nature of pain reminds us of what the ease of pleasure foolishly allows us to forget. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is true that 'I seem to see a table' does not entail 'I see a table'; but 'I seem to feel a pain' does entail 'I feel a pain'. So scepticism loses its force - cannot open up its characteristic gap - with regard to that which ultimately most concerns us, pleasure and pain. — Galen Strawson

What we call pleasure, and rightly so is the absence of all pain. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Truth's nakedness is not concerned with whom it strikes - painfully, or with pleasure; responding appropriately to its ingenuous temperament, however, rewards perceptions of unbiased transparency. — T.F. Hodge

He was talking. I tried not to think of how he looked and instead of what he was telling me. Once I accomplished that, my brain couldn't get past the 'running' part.
"I don't run." I walked the mile run at school. True story.
I abhorred any kind of physical exercise. I wasn't good at it. I was skinny, but I was soft; had absolutely no muscle mass at all. That's the way I liked it. Who was he to try to change that, change me? I wouldn't let him. No way, no how.
One half of his mouth lifted. He seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. "You do now. You have to be fit, you have to be strong, Taryn, if you're to stand any chance of surviving this. Come on, we'll start with stretching."
He forced me to twist my body into unimaginable positions. I even had to touch my toes. The agony. Luke took pleasure from my pain; even laughing as I moaned and groaned through it all.
Then, the worst came about. He. Made. Me. Run. — Lindy Zart

Fear is the memory of pain. Addiction is the memory of pleasure. Freedom is beyond both. — Deepak Chopra

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

Chasing after a pleasure to ease a pain is like running after a breeze to cool you down. — Guy Finley

Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence — Frida Kahlo

The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. — Charles Darwin

As long as it still hurts, it isn't love yet. — Silvia Hartmann

She would never, she thought, be allowed to enjoy a moments pleasure without an eternity of pain. — Tonya Hurley

Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness. — Epicurus

Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her - oh yes - until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home. — Clive Barker

There is No Pleasure without Pain — A. Dragonblood

In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life. — Rabindranath Tagore

The pain... the pleasure... and the shame all drive me crazy. — Shungiku Nakamura

The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure. — George Bernard Shaw

LUKE: O, what is life, and what our purpose here?
Are living creatures made for pain and strife,
Do we but walk our days upon the ground
To perish without memory or fame?
If so, what shall we seek whilst we yet like?
Is brave adventure worthy of our time,
Or should we seek the principle of pleasure? — Ian Doescher

I hate wise men because they are lazy, cowardly, and prudent. To the philosophers' equanimity, which makes them indifferent to both pleasure and pain, I prefer devouring passions. The sage knows neither the tragedy of passion, nor the fear of death, nor risk and enthusiasm, nor barbaric, grotesque, or sublime heroism. He talks in proverbs and gives advice. He does not live, feel, desire, wait for anything. He levels down all the incongruities of life and then suffers the consequences. So much more complex is the man who suffers from limitless anxiety. The wise man's life is empty and sterile, for it is free from contradiction and despair. An existence full of irreconcilable contradictions is so much richer and creative. The wise man's resignation springs from inner void, not inner fire. I would rather die of fire than of void. — Emil Cioran

You creating ones, you higher men! Whoever has to give birth is sick;
whoever has given birth, however, is unclean.
Ask women: one gives birth, not because it gives pleasure. The pain
makes hens and poets cackle.
You creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because
you have had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth has also come into the world! Go
apart! He who has given birth shall wash his soul! — Friedrich Nietzsche

When a free man dies, he loses the pleasure of life. A slave loses his pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he's not afraid of it. That's why we'll win. — Spartacus

Hearts united in pain and sorrow
will not be separated by joy and happiness.
Bonds that are woven in sadness
are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.
Love that is washed by tears
will remain eternally pure and faithful. — Kahlil Gibran

Let the awe [the teacher] has upon [children's] minds be so tempered with the constant marks of tenderness and good will, that affection may spur them to their duty, and make them find a pleasure in complying with his dictates. This will bring them with satisfaction to their tutor; make them hearken to him, as to one who is their friend, that cherishes them, and takes pains for their good; this will keep their thoughts easy and free, whilst they are with him, the only temper wherein the mind is capable of receiving new information, and of admitting into itself those impressions. — John Locke

The philosopher's lecture room is a 'hospital': you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain; for you are not in good condition when you arrive. — Epictetus

It's so difficult to love another person and yourself for who they are and not what they do or who they could be. To stay in this moment and know it in all its pleasure and its pain. The world is a beautiful place. How often do we say this aloud? — Vicki Forman

Choices are usually decisions motivated by pleasure and pain, and the divided mind acts with the sole purpose of getting "I" into pleasure and out of pain.

But the best pleasures are those for which we do not plan, and the worst part of pain is expecting it and trying to get away from it when it has come. — Alan W. Watts

Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop the experience, to step outside it. — Geoffrey Wood

Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good. — Hermann Hesse

The only thing we are naturally afraid of is pain, or loss of pleasure. And because these are not annexed to any shape, colour, or size of visible objects, we are frighted of none of them, till either we have felt pain from them, or have notions put into us that they will do us harm. — John Locke

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

the pity which the spectators then exhibit is in so far a consolation for the weak and suffering in that the latter recognize therein that they possess still one power , in spite of their weakness, the power of giving pain. The unfortunate derives a sort of pleasure from this feeling of superiority, of which the exhibition of pity makes him conscious; his imagination is exalted, he is still powerful enough to give the world pain. Thus the thirst for pity is the thirst for self-gratification, and that, moreover, at the expense of his fellow-men; it shows man in the whole inconsiderateness of his own dear self, but — Friedrich Nietzsche

We stood, separated by space, certainly, in identical conditions of pleasant uncertainty and anticipation, and we both held our hearts in our hands, all pink and palpitating and ready for pleasure and pain, and we were about to throw these hearts in each other's face like snowballs, or cricket balls (How's that?) or, more accurately, like great bleeding wounds: 'Take my wound. — Doris Lessing

He actually made damnation seem attractive. She had heard of men who rejected gods, who professed not to believe, but here was a believer who refused to grovel, a man who stood up to Shiva, to Buddha, to the gods of his own race, whoever they might be, who stood right up to them and demanded an accounting for a system in which pleasure must be paid for with pain, a system in which the only triumph over suffering was hard-won oblivion, a system that offered its captive audience little choice in matters concerning duration of performance. — Tom Robbins

You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly - that business about marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain. — Anthony Burgess

In youth, the absense of pleasure is pain, in old age, the absence of pain is pleasure. — Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!
How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow!
How much of good or evil must be done by him! — Jane Austen

If you're willing to take the humiliation of sticking your head above the crowd, maybe it's, you know, the pleasure will be worth the pain. — Sylvester Stallone

There's a lot of pain and suffering out there. I think there needs to be more joy, and love, and orgasms in the world. We are a pleasure-negati ve society. Suffering is much more acceptable. And I want to tell women that they are sexually powerful beings, but they often don't get in touch with it because they are socialized to please men. — Annie Sprinkle

The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain; and the object of economics is to maximize happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain. — William Stanley Jevons

Suddenly I realized she was asleep. Exhausted by her flight she had fallen asleep against my shoulder as so many times, in taxis, in buses, on a park-seat. I sat still and let her be. There was nothing to disturb her in the dark church. The candles napped around the virgin, and there was nobody else there. The slowly growing pain in my upper arm where her weight lay was the greatest pleasure I had ever known. — Graham Greene

Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it. — Thomas Hobbes

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I relived those memories repeatedly until I could breathe in his presence all around. The thought that I had lost him forever was a constant dull pain. May be poets had it right. Love was pain in disguise. I revered it, as there was pleasure in that pain. — Preethi Venugopala

To be born, to live and to die is merely to change forms ... And what does one form matter any more than another? ... Each form has its own sort of happiness and unhappiness. From the elephant down to the flea ... from the flea down to the sensitive and living molecule which is the origin of all, there is not a speck in the whole of nature that does not feel pain or pleasure. — John Dewey

It's very simple," I said, my voice clipped and brusque. "His belt is for holding up his pants, binding me, and hurting me. His body, any part of it, is to give me pleasure and pain. If he gives any other woman either of those things with his body or any clothing accessory, it's cheating." I turned to him. "The fact that we were officially broken up notwithstanding. — C.D. Reiss

Shall I, to please another wine-sprung minde, Lose all mine own? God hath giv'n me a measure Short of His can and body; must I find A pain in that, wherein he finds a pleasure? — George Herbert

Joy in pain is better than sorrow in pleasure. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Sentience is not an end in itself. It is a means to the end of staying alive. Sentient beings use sensations of pain and suffering to escape situations that threaten their lives and sensations of pleasure to pursue situations that enhance their lives. Just as humans will often endure excruciating pain in order to remain alive, animals will often not only endure but inflict on themselves excruciating pain - as when gnawing off a paw caught in a trap - in order to live. Sentience is what evolution has produced in order to ensure the survival of certain complex organisms. To claim that a being who has evolved to develop a consciousness of pain and pleasure has no interest in remaining alive is to say that conscious beings have no interest in remaining conscious, a most peculiar position to take. — Gary L. Francione

A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should ... touch places in you that you didn't know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild ... It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it's very nearly pain ... It should make you want to do things you'd never dreamed you'd want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you've ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact ... " he paused for effect " ... haunt you for the rest of your life. — Julie Anne Long

We commonly confuse love with the strong emotions most often associated with it, such as joy, attachment, lust, infatuation, pleasure, pain, fear, and hope, to name a few. But, love is not a feeling; love itself is an action. There are countless emotions and beliefs that can cause us to love. Love is the willing giving of self to another living being. Love is giving the life, time, energy, and resources that we would normally give or use for our self to someone else. Love is an action that enhances the well-being of another living being. — C W Newman

Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn. — Anne Rice

But he also knew that, as much as he wanted to aid and console the soldier, he wanted to be alone in his room with the night coming down and a book close by and pen and paper and the knowledge that the door would remain shut until the morning came and he would ne be disturbed. The gap between these two desires filled him with sadness and awe at the mystery of the self, the mystery of having a single consciousness, knowing merely its own bare feelings and experiencing singly and alone it own pain or fear or pleasure or complacency. — Colm Toibin

Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. — Viktor E. Frankl

The other exception to the rule regards dealings with masochists. A masochist derives pleasure from being hurt; so denying the masochist his pleasure through-pain hurts him just as much as actual physical pain hurts the non masochist. The story of the truly cruel sadist illustrates this point: The masochist says to the sadist, "beat me." To which the merciless sadist replies, "NO!" If a person wants to be hurt and enjoys suffering, then there is no reason not to indulge him in his
wont. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

And in fact the artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. And if instead of "heat" one could say "sex";- sex in the great, pure sense of the word, free of any sin attached to it by the Church, - then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetic power is great and as strong as a primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms in itself and explodes from him like a volcano. — Rainer Maria Rilke

TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art
which just means art whose primary aim is to make money
is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas 'serious' art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. — David Foster Wallace

Pain from serving God is better than pleasure from serving the devil. — Matshona Dhliwayo

For you, I am even willing to suffer. Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now. Let's enjoy this time. It's marvelous. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In contrast to modern art, which causes displeasure-modern art, by definition, hurts. In this precise sense, modern art is sublime: it causes pleasure-in-pain, it produces its effect through its own failure, insofar as it refers to the impossible Things. — Slavoj Zizek