Sermon quotes on pleasure
James H. Aughey
Sensual pleasures are like soap-bubbles, sparkling, evanescent. The pleasures of intellect are calm, beautiful, sublime, ever enduring and climbing upward to the borders of the unseen world.
Josh Billings
Don’t mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.
Robert Burns
Pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed.
François de La Rochefoucauld
If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.
Maxims
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Timothy Keller
Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six or that work and rest should be balanced evenly but directs us to the opposite ratio. Leisure and pleasure are great goods, but we can take only so much of them.
Soren Kierkegaard
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
C.S. Lewis
Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
C.S. Lewis
Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire?”
Mark Oerter
We aim for happiness but we settle for pleasure…which is only momentary.
John Steinbeck
I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Mark Twain
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
Rick Warren
Every human activity, except sin, can be done for God’s pleasure, if you do it with an attitude of praise.
N.T. Wright
The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.
After We Believe
Socrates
How singular is the thing called pleasure and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it . . . yet he who pursues either is generally compelled to take the other; their bodies are two but they are joined by the same head.
Vaclev Havel
Pursuit of the good life will not help humanity save itself, nor is democracy alone enough…A turning to and seeking of . . . God, is needed. The human race constantly forgets, that he is not God.
Robert Marquand, “Václav Havel: Crisis of ‘Human Spirit’ Demands Spiritual Reawakening,” Christian Science Monitor, December 22, 2011,
Catherine the Great
Dieu pardonerra; c’est son métier; God forgives you — it’s his thing.
C.S. Lewis
An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.
The Screwtape Letters
M. Scott Peck
[Maturity is] the ability to delay gratification. Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.”
The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978) 19.
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Pleasure.