Pleasure and Pain

Pure pleasures of the mind surpass mixed bodily pleasures; the good life blends pleasure with wisdom, but wisdom takes precedence.

Pleasure completes activity as bloom completes youth; there are good and bad pleasures, and temperance is the virtue that moderates bodily ones.

Nature demands only that pain be absent from the body; the wise seek unmixed pleasures of the mind over the torments of desire.

Pleasure and pain are indifferent; what matters is the use we make of impressions, not the sensations themselves.

Joy and sorrow are movements of the appetite in satisfaction or frustration; pleasure may attend virtue but is never its end.

Pleasure is the appearance of good, pain of evil; all voluntary action springs from desire for pleasure or aversion to pain.

Pleasure and pain are the hinges on which the passions turn; happiness is the utmost pleasure, and misery the utmost pain.

Pleasure cannot ground the moral law; duty opposes inclination, and a good will acts from respect for law, not from desire for satisfaction.

Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends, but pleasures differ in quality, and it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.

The pleasure principle governs mental life by driving toward the reduction of tension, but the reality principle and the death instinct complicate the picture beyond any simple hedonism.