"Pleasurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pride in stacking, for it was a test of skill. It was clean work. Even now, as I ride a country lane, and see men at work handling oats or hay, I recall the pleasurable sides of work on the farm and long to return ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... tempest blackens on the dusky moor, And billows lash the long-resounding shore; In pensive mood I roam the desert ground, And vainly sigh for scenes no longer found. Oh, whither fled the pleasurable hours That chased each care, and fired the muse's powers; The classic haunts of youth, for ever gay Where mirth and friendship cheer'd the close of day, The well-known valleys where I wont to roam, The native sports, the nameless joys of home? Far different ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... soon regain my freedom, I found it easy to forgive—taking great pains not to forget—any injustice which had been done me. Liberty is sweet, even to one whose appreciation of it has never been augmented by its temporary loss. The pleasurable emotions which my impending liberation aroused within me served to soften my speech and render me more tractable. This change the assistant physician was not slow to note, though he was rather slow ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... horses, or, these failing, have walked the distance, six or seven miles. True, Oyster Creek, the shallow western outlet of the Gambia, has still a ferry: a bridge was lately built, but it fell before it was finished. It would, however, have been pleasurable to pass a night away from the fever-haunts ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to the Apollo Theatre in search of merely pleasurable sensations, and he got exactly what he wanted. The old house was brilliant even in those days, less with light than with jewels, it is true, but perhaps that illumination was as good as any other. The ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... and things became worse instead of better; the cattle of the truculent wretch died fast, and the infernal hag gave him the pleasurable tidings that her arts were useless, and that the destructive visitation upon his cattle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... they proceeded on their way in silence. Sergeant Lumbe's brain—such as it was—was in too much of a whirl to permit him to talk coherently; Tufnell, habitually a taciturn individual, had been rendered more so than usual by the events of the night; and Caldew was plunged into such a reverie of pleasurable expectation, regarding the outcome of his investigations of the moat-house murder, that the stages of his promotion through the grades of detective, sub-superintendent, and superintendent, flashed ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... this form the Lyrical Ballads were published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed in the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the second edition he added a preface of considerable length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was understood to contend for the extension of this style ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... wearisome of all people. As a body, I believe they are so. But I must dissent from the authority of Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth so far as to distinguish. Where madness is connected, as it often is, with some miserable derangement of the stomach, liver, &c. and attacks the principle of pleasurable life, which is manifestly seated in the central organs of the body (i.e. in the stomach and the apparatus connected with it), there it cannot but lead to perpetual suffering and distraction of thought; and there ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... differently prepared. The hour of supper being arrived, we repair to rooms illuminated with the lustre of a thousand tapers fragrant with amber. The supper-room is surrounded by three vast galleries, in which are placed musicians, whose various instruments fill the mind with the most pleasurable and the softest emotions. The young girls are seated at table with us, and, towards the conclusion of the repast, they sing songs, which are hymns in honour of the God who has endowed us with senses which shed such a charm over existence, and which promise us new pleasure ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... came to the rescue. When a picnic or a tea-party was in store, if Madam Liberality did not catch cold, so as to hinder her from going, she was pretty sure to have a quinsy from fatigue or wet feet afterwards. When she had a treat she paid for the pleasurable excitement by a headache, just as when she ate sweet things ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... pains and pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by to-morrow's dinner. The 'future pleasure' does not exist; the anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance. Certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. When, however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable thing, we can only express these undeniable facts by accepting a purely egoistic conclusion. We are, of course, moved by our own feelings, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... had been delightful, for, first of all, Rob's return from boarding-school was a pleasurable event; he always came home in such good spirits, was so full of his jokes and nonsense, and had so many funny things to tell about the boys. Then there was the dressing of the church with evergreens, and the decoration of the parlor with wreaths of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his wealth, after the manner, O son of Kunti, of scattering seeds on the ground. Let there be no doubt then in thy mind. Where, however, wealth that is more or even equal is not to be gained, there should be no expenditure of wealth. For investment of wealth are like the ass, scratching, pleasurable at first but painful afterwards. Thus, O king of men, the person who throweth away like seeds a little of his virtue in order to gain a larger measure of virtue, is regarded as wise. Beyond doubt, it is as I say. They that are wise alienate ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hold the objects of the natural world amidst which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in joy and sympathy in trouble, only in books.... What share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends?... There is surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... divined his thoughts, and without a word turned over on his side and pretended to go to sleep again. From under his drooping eyelids he saw the officer gazing at him with a look in which dislike, disappointment, and pleasurable expectation seemed to be struggling for mastery. Then with a click he extinguished his torch ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... half careless and half abashed, and expressed, in more appropriate terms than his appearance warranted, his pleasurable surprise at seeing me at last. There was, however, a singularity in his conversation, which gave it an air both of shrewdness and vulgarity. This was, as may before have been noted, a profuse intermixture of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... asks Molly, impatiently, full of keen and pleasurable excitement. "I die of vulgar curiosity. What is he like? Is he young, handsome? Oh, John, do say he is ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... and think it our duty to make life as agreable as is consistent with what we owe to others; but a true pleasurable philosopher seeks his enjoyments where they are really to be found; not in the gratifications of a childish pride, but of those affections which are born with us, and which are the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... gate, erected so recently that the sods from the post-holes were yet green, he stopped. The successive changes of the place were so startling to him that he wished to contemplate them more slowly. It was an ideal spot and filled the soul with pleasurable anticipation. The children played on the grass, and the hotel employees sang as they dawdled by in pursuit of their duties. Everything bespoke luxury and ease. In the entrance doorway of the hotel stood a stout man, probably the proprietor. He was looking ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... pleasurable they did not tarry for its explanation but promptly separated; the ladies returning to their hotel to order their carriage and repack the few articles they had ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... mourning for her children; shrubs and plants fettered up in glittering chains, motionless as those stone-struck feasters before the head of Gorgon; and the dark-green fir-trees swathed in heavy curtains of iridescent whiteness. Contrast is ever pleasurable; therefore we need scarcely apologize for an ice in the dog-days—I mean for this present unseasonable ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... for the pastor to adopt a policy commensurate with modern demands. He should lead, but on the other hand a very legitimate fear of being discredited through failure deters him; traditional methods hold the field; peace at any price and pleasurable satisfaction play a large part in church affairs; the adult, whose character is already formed, receives disproportionate attention; money for purposes of experimentation in church work is hard to get; everything points to moderation and the beaten ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... plain, unostentatious man afforded more pleasurable feelings than could all the gilded pomp beneath the sun." One can fancy, if John had communicated this reflection to the Doctor, what would have been the reply of that suave practitioner. He goes to low dance-houses, and the interesting result ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... said nothing to him on this subject, his feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable anxiety to be in conflict with his rival—a deadly conflict—a close, hard death-struggle—was now the predominant feeling in his mind;—but the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and humiliations, also. Not that he had ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... hear the rustle of clothes carried to and fro. She knew there were things to dress for—a luncheon, and a bevy of teas—things which must be gone through with, things which at other times she had found sufficiently pleasurable. But now, try as she would to turn her mind to these, it persistently wandered back to the jewel. All the fine, simple pleasure of the morning was dazzled out by it. She slipped it off her finger on to the dressing-table, and it lay among her laces like a ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... pleasurable sensation to back up right by might. Four years ago I vowed that some day I'd meet him on equal terms. There's a raft of things on the slate, for he has been unspeakable kinds of a rascal; beating harmless coolies . . . and women. I may not ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... announcing her plan of campaign to her mother, she found Massachusetts Avenue blocked with carriages and recalled suddenly that Tuesday was "Representatives' day." She gave a little laugh as she imagined Mrs. Madison's plaintive distaste. And then she felt the tremor and flutter, the pleasurable desire to run away, which had assailed her on the night of her first ball. That was eight years ago, and she had not experienced a moment of ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... these labours of love, from the consideration that they possess the most leisure and the best opportunities of doing them. It would prove a wise and pleasurable mode of employing some of the intervals of domestic engagement, and furnish both useful and interesting subjects of reflection to fill up the vacuities of thought. But if the multiplicity of their concerns furnish some plausible excuse for, at least, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... mind, this quality of emotion was wholly pleasurable and quite exciting, and instead of crying out "More misery! more unhappiness!" he could now, as he passed the mulberry, say to himself ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... foot, as though a gust of flame had beaten on her. O God! he had spoken; she could no longer feign the pleasurable quietude of ignorance. She hid behind her fan, her face purple with blushes. The children, whirling madly in the last of the quadrilles, were making the floor ring with the beating of their feet. There were silvery peals of laughter, and bird-like ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... gesture signs, which, even if not "natural," are intelligible to the most widely separated of mankind. A Sandwich Islander, a Chinese, and the Africans from the slaver Amistad have, in published instances, visited our deaf-mute institutions with the same result of free and pleasurable intercourse; and an English deaf-mute had no difficulty in conversing with Laplanders. It appears, also, on the authority of Sibscota, whose treatise was published in 1670, that Cornelius Haga, ambassador of the United Provinces to the Sublime Porte, found the Sultan's mutes to have established ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... house of your neighbour, smoke his cigars and drink his whisky, brought to you while reclining in a long chair on the verandah with the punkah swinging lazily over you, waiting for the master's return. This is done with the pleasurable knowledge that your friend would naturally instal himself in your house under like circumstances. Here is real charm. Think, too, of the outdoor life, of those lovely evenings when the air is soft and warm, the moon at full and of a size never seen in ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... approving voice, and added another pleasurable emotion to those he was already feeling. The mother sat down, and, for a few moments, enjoyed the sight of her sick child, as with unabated eagerness she continued to extract the refreshing juice from the fruit. When she went down-stairs, ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... "we hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalut. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the 'Made in Singhalut' tag on ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... there much in savage life, calculated to inspire the mind of civilized man, with pleasurable sensations. Many of the virtues practised by them, proceed rather from necessity or ignorance than from any ethical principle existing among them. The calm composure with which they meet death and their stoical indifference to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... movements which we distinguish as (1) smile, (2) broad smile or grin, (3) laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a man or woman can prevent all indication by muscular movement of a desire to laugh or even to smile. Usually laughter is excited by certain pleasurable emotions, and is to be regarded as an "expression" of such emotion just as certain movements and the flow of tears are an "expression" of the painful emotion of grief and physical suffering, and as other ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... man in his condition is a singular process. It consists of a small number of memories, forecasts, Imaginings, repeated over and over again, till one would think the brain must weary itself beyond endurance. It can go on for many hours consecutively, and not only remain a sufficient and pleasurable employment, but render every other business repulsive, all ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the principal ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... pleasurable days at the Villa Ariadne were no more. The spirit of suspicion, of unrest, of doubt now stalked abroad, peering from veiled eyes, hovering on lips. And there was a coming and going of menials, a to-and-froing of extra gardeners and carpenters, and the sound of ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... unknown delights, to dry the first tears of tenderness, to inspire that first mixture of fear and hope, of vague desires and expectant inquietude; whoever has never had that satisfaction has missed the most pleasurable of all the delights of love. But taken in that sense, virginity is rather a moral inclination, as Buffon says, than a physical matter, and nothing can justify the barbarous precautions against amorous theft which were taken by unnatural fathers and ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the wardrobe to get his coat. There was a wonderful change in him; he felt little or no reluctance to pay the visits now. The pleasurable excitement of answering Mr. Darth had put him in a fine aggressive frame of mind for asserting himself in the neighborhood. "Whatever else they may say of me, they shan't say I was afraid to face them." Heated red-hot with that idea, he seized his hat and gloves, and hurrying out ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... such a place, Where thou, my God, art seen, Is sweeter than ten thousand days Of pleasurable sin. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... he judged at all—as he might have judged the more material workmanship of his own hands. But this face that was framed for a few brief moments in the door reached out to him and stirred an interest within him which was as new as it was pleasurable. It was a beautiful face. He knew that in a fraction of the first second. It was not white, as he had first seen it through the window. The girl's cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing quickly, as though from the effect of climbing ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... lowest. And yet a third proof: I fancy the only quite real pleasures are those of the philosopher. There is an intermediate state between pleasure and pain. To pass into this from pleasure is painful, and from pain is pleasurable. Now, the pleasures of the body are really nothing more than reliefs from pains of one kind or another. And, next, the pleasures of the soul, being of the eternal order, are necessarily more real ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... rib belonged to the integral perfection of Adam, not as an individual, but as the principle of the human race; just as the semen belongs to the perfection of the begetter, and is released by a natural and pleasurable operation. Much more, therefore, was it possible that by the Divine power the body of the woman should be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... by without any very pleasurable excitement, and I regret to say that the earl went fast to sleep in the drawing-room as soon as he had swallowed his cup of coffee. During dinner he had been very courteous to both his guests, but towards Eames he had used a good-humoured and, almost affectionate familiarity. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... recovered her memory, and the full use of her understanding. Vivian observed, that she and Lady Sarah were both convinced, by Lady Mary Vivian's curiosity, that he had given no hint of any thing which they did not wish to be known: and the pleasurable consciousness of his integrity disposed him to be pleased with them. Lord Glistonbury, on his side, was convinced that Vivian had behaved honourably with respect to his daughter Julia; so all parties were well satisfied ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr. Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud stranger within the gates—"house-guest," as the society column prefers it—for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed, sickened, and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was presumably valuable. His friend, Mr. Cullen, I detested, and the reference to Bow Street puzzled me. However, I had no doubt that in a few minutes everything would be explained. Meantime I permitted myself to indulge in certain very pleasurable anticipations. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of book-buyers, Roswell Field says, "The book-lover, so-called, who lacks any of the thrills that go with the establishment as well as the enjoyment of a library in all of its appointments has deprived himself of many of the most pleasurable literary and semi-literary emotions. That bibliophile never pats his horse or his dog. To him his books are merely tools of trade, accessories to knowledge, to be pawed over, thrown away and replaced by new copies when worn out. He glories ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... the younger man worked with subdued excitement. There was a flush in his cheeks, and he breathed rapidly. The emotion that possessed him could not be altogether pleasurable, for at moments he cast his eyes about him with a pained, almost a desperate look. He walked up and down with clenched fist, occasionally ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... have enjoyed keeping it up with nonsense of this pleasurable sort, but as soon as Anne was back in the car she somehow turned him aside upon quite different ground, just how he could not tell. He found himself led on to talk about his work, and he could not discover in her questioning a trace ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... for which he knew she was hungering. He did not look at her too closely. All at once it had dawned upon him that her situation must be tremendously more embarrassing than his own. He felt, too, the tingle of a new excitement in his veins. It was a pleasurable sensation, something which he did not pause to analyze just at present. Only he knew that it was because she had told him as plainly as she could that ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... the creator of this sublime work. But it is denied that he understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms which express the tender and delicate feelings, those which the divine pencil of Raphael so admirably represented. I own that he took little heed of the pleasurable aspect of things; his austere genius was at ease only in grave thoughts; but I do not agree that he was always a stranger to gentle beauty, to feminine beauty in particular. I shall not cite the "Virgin" of the London Academy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... kept him in countenance, but Clorinda rather trifled with the sweets, drinking so much strong tea in her pleasurable agitation, that to an observer given to ludicrous ideas, her jetty face would have suggested the idea of an old fashioned black teapot, with her pug nose for the chubby spout. Sally witnessed this dashing festival from behind the door, scraped up the jelly left in the glasses, stole bits of ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... 'Must we starve on account of your silly notions about virtue, and such humbug? Your sister and I have long since learned to dispose of our persons for pecuniary benefit, as well as for our sensual gratification—for it is as pleasurable as profitable; and you must do the same, now ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... regret," continued M. Fridriksson, "that my occupation will entirely preclude the possibility of my accompanying you. It would have been both pleasurable and profitable if I could have ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... transparent is its economy under ordinary circumstances! abstinence and cleanliness, labor and rest, these simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that may be engrossed upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain the equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that equilibrium is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced that ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... in any sinful practice, and yet thou canst not abandon thy daily dose of this or that poison without suicide. For the sin of thy soul has become the necessity of thy body, daily tormenting thee, without yielding thee any the least pleasurable sensation, but goading thee on by terror without hope. Under such evidence of God's wrath how canst thou expect to be saved?" Well may the heart cry out, "Who shall deliver me from the 'body of this death',—from this death that lives and tyrannizes ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... body is like a good estate to his mind, from which he receives rents and revenues of profit and pleasure in kind, according to its extent, and the richness of the soil. Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation; an effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others, from feeling none in itself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution; an exuberance of good-humour and good-nature; an overflowing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... horrors positively distasteful! Did he expect even Englishmen to become enthusiastic over the hiring of British troops to the infamous Surajah Dowlah for the massacre of the brave Rohillas? Did he expect them to peruse with pleasurable pride the robbery of the Princesses of Oude, the brutal execution of Nuncomar, or the forged treaty by which Ormichund was entrapped? Having painted the atrocities and craven cowardice of Chief Justice Impey, could ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... work at noon or at night, Joan would see traces of Anice's presence, and listen to Liz's praises of her. Liz was fond of her and found comfort in her. The days when the gray pony came to a stop in his jog-trot on the roadside before the gate had a kind of pleasurable excitement in them. They were the sole spice of her life. She understood Anice as little as she understood Joan, but she liked her. She had a vague fancy that in some way Anice was like Joan; that there was the same strength ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on the beach as we rounded the north-east point, and afforded us the pleasurable anticipation of some fresh food. We had explored tropical coasts for several months, without reaping any one of the advantages usually attending it, and been frequently tantalized with the sight of turtle in the water, and of bones and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... write like that to a woman about her husband. But Lawrence always was a cool hand. I remember the turn-up we had in the Farringay woods when I was twelve and he was fourteen. He nearly murdered me. But I paid him out," said Bernard in a glow of pleasurable reminiscence. "He was too heavy for me. Old Andrew Hyde came and dragged him off. But I marked him: he was banished from his mother's drawingroom for a week—not that he minded that much . . . Aunt Helen was a pretty woman. Gertrude and I never could think why she married ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... than when it is due to dialogue. Of course there is no sharp line of demarcation. One understands, however, why successful farce is more popular than a successful comedy, even if afterwards the audience suffer a little from aching sides; the ache itself causes a pleasurable memory. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... decorations on it, which, it seems to me, would be lots better to impress the ordinary class of people than just a plain old-fashioned colonial house, such as you describe. And that would be the proper center for all educational and pleasurable activities, instead of letting them fall into the hands of ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... been seen, the days of the Holy Father's journey were not all spent in pleasurable greetings or official receptions. He never forgot or neglected the work of reform and improvement. Nor were such care and labor new to him. It had often been said that the Popes were hostile to all modern improvements. Why did they not favor railways? Why did ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... originality, and ease, which shine so conspicuously even in the prose works of the poet; but they have many redeeming points about them. His taste was as pure as his judgment was masculine. He has been heard to say, that the two most pleasurable moments of his life were—first, when he read Mackenzie's story of La Roche, and secondly, when Robert took him apart, at the breakfast or dinner hour, during harvest, and read to him, while seated on a barley sheaf, his MS. copy of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however, the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger influences ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the first emotion was anything but pleasurable; but Captain Keppel's conciliatory and kind manner soon removed any feeling of fear; and was all along of the greatest use to me in our subsequent doings. The first qualification, in dealing with a Malay, is a kind and gentle ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... more regular historians, and the composition which still keeps its author's fame alive is his Correspondence with some of his numerous friends, male and female, in England or abroad, which he maintained with an assiduity which showed how pleasurable he found the task, while the care with which he secured the preservation of his letters, begging his correspondents to retain them, in case at any future time he should desire their return, proves that he anticipated the possibility that they might hereafter be found ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Everywhere we perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is pleasurable. When we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functions of the animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high enjoyment. The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental functions—a mind ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... habitations, with small doors and windows; and the groups of trees proved to be huge lava masses, from ten to fifteen feet in height, entirely overgrown with verdure and moss. Everything was new, was surprising; and it was with pleasurable sensations of excitement and curiosity that Madame Pfeiffer landed on ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... at the anticipation of giving up her kingdom into the hands of so unfitting a ruler as Cecil, there lurked a pleasurable consciousness that at last Christopher would recognise her worth, when he found how inferior her successor was to herself. It was strange how this desire to compel the regard which she had voluntarily forfeited, had haunted Elisabeth for so many years. Christopher had offended her past all pardon, ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... knows where the hand of fate is leading one. Thank God we know not what to-morrow is going to bring forth. All pleasure and zest in life would be gone if we only knew what to-morrow was going to do for us. Yet we have to behave to-day—or should behave to-day—so as to secure a pleasurable and profitable to-morrow, in case we are permitted to be alive on the morrow. It seems to me how wonderful it is that any act on one's part—quite unpremeditated, or only if done just by chance—can have so great an influence on all our to-morrows. It may ruin ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... much in his life. His elation was extreme, and so pleasurable that whenever it flagged he ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the question of optimism and pessimism, Darwin held that though pain and suffering were very often the ways by which animals were led to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to the species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides. "We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind, in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and from loving our families." But there was to him so much ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... which determines the will, means not always or only the anticipation of a pleasure or a pain, but often the desire of the action itself. The action having finally become by association in itself desirable, we may get the habit of willing it (that is, get a purpose) without reference to its being pleasurable. We are then said ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... discovery of mine, life has been a more pleasurable business. We feel now that there are romantic possibilities about Letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything. Each time that ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... be merely negative. The object at first gave uneasiness: this uneasiness gradually wears off as the object grows familiar: and the mind, finding it at last entirely removed, reckons its situation really pleasurable, compared with ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... stockings she held in her hands. Some were open-work and embroidered, and the cheapest were fifteen francs a pair. It had to be decided whether these should be upheld by suspenders or by garters. Owen's taste was for garters, and the choice of a pair filled them with a pleasurable embarrassment. In the next shop—it was a glove shop—as she was about to consult him regarding the number of buttons, she remembered, in a sudden moment of painful realisation, the end for which they had met. She turned pale, and the words caught in her throat. Fortunately, his eyes were turned ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... re-read it. The little room seemed too small and close for her. She opened the window to let in the white daylight, undisguised by the faint green tint of the glass, and she leaned out to breathe the fresh sweet air of the spring morning. Life was very pleasurable to her to-day. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... been content to have gone on his way. He wondered many times why his heart had turned from Ann to another. Something in every thought of Fledra Cronk sent his blood tingling and set his heart to leaping. His dreams melted into pleasurable anticipations, and he tried to imagine the windings of his future path. Chance had always been kind, and he wondered whether an opportunity to win the affections of the small, defiant girl in the Shellington home would be given ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... tired, and out of spirits as he was, he nevertheless felt a certain pleasurable sensation as he left St. Pancras, driving homeward through the hot crowded streets. Erica would be waiting for him at home, and he had a comparatively leisure afternoon. There was the meeting on the Opium Trade at eight, but he ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... unwelcome, that there were unexplored recesses of his nature to which the most intimate of them had never penetrated. In those dark corners of the spirit either a saint or a sinner might be lurking, and there was a pleasurable excitement in peering into them, and wondering which it was. No woman ever found him dull. Perhaps it would have been better for him if they had, for his impulsive nature had never been long content with a chilly friendship. He was, as we may see, a man with a past, but ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and months after his leaving Meredith when his soul cried aloud to him but was smothered. He would not heed. He let business and coarse, pleasurable excitement gain power over him, and when they lagged he drank his ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... according to his own advantage—the question asks merely what this advantage is in the concrete, and whether he who seeks it, seeks it prudently. Even the satisfaction of revenge may be felt as an advantage if it is more pleasurable than the pain which follows confession—the matter is one of relative weight and is prudently sought as the substitution of an immediate and petty advantage for ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... it. Here, owing to the thickness of the hollies and the projecting arms of other large overhanging timber, added to the uncertain light above, the gloom was almost impervious, and he could scarcely see a yard before him. Still, he pressed on unhesitatingly, and with a sort of pleasurable sensation at the difficulties he was encountering. Suddenly, however, he was startled by a blue phosphoric light streaming through the bushes on the left, and, looking up, he beheld at the foot of an enormous oak, whose ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sold the furniture and took rooms in Scarborough, where, amid pleasurable surroundings, she determined to lead the joyous life of a grass-widow, free of all cares. Then, to her astonishment and disgust, Nina was born. She had not bargained for Nina. She found herself in the tiresome position of a mother whose ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the most criminal of all plots, and for a moment the longing stole over him to betray the traitors and deliver them into the hand of the mighty sovereign whose destruction they were plotting. But he repelled the thought and merely sunned himself in the pleasurable consciousness—the first during this cruel hour-of holding Kasana and her royal lover in his hand as one holds a beetle by a string. This had a favorable effect on him and restored the confidence and courage he had lost. The baser the things he continued to hear, the more clearly he learned to appreciate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to the task of cheering her somewhat moody brother. She sat beside him, resting her hand with sisterly affection upon his shoulder, while in a low, sweet voice she talked to him, adroitly touching those topics only which she knew awoke pleasurable associations in his mind. Her words were sweet as manna and full of womanly tenderness and sympathy, skilfully wrapped in a strain of gaiety like a bridal veil which covers the tears ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... matter whether he has been friend or foe. I have no resentments, no bitterness of feeling to carry with me. On the contrary, I shall go back to the pursuit of my profession with my mind and my heart filled with only grateful recollection and a pleasurable, and I trust a pardonable, pride for the gallant, intrepid band who have honored me with their support in this contest. Without any disposition to criticise or find fault in the slightest degree, but only as an excuse in so far as that may be necessary for enlisting ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... bells always produced in Bonaparte pleasurable sensations, which I could never account for. When we were at Malmaison, and walking in the alley leading to the plain of Ruel, how many times has the bell of the village church interrupted ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to look upon the body with its needs and its desires, as an enemy to be overcome; or that its allurements are dangerous although pleasurable. No. We say to the student, "control the desires of the body. Make them do the bidding of the Self, because it is only by so doing that you can gain the immortal heights of god-hood, looking down upon the fleeting dream of personality, with its ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... But Manuel was too wily to yield to a temptation merely because it was pleasurable. As long as the boy did not know that he had been found out, he would live in a Fool's Paradise of his own cleverness. Believing himself unsuspected, he would carry out his plans—whatever they were—the while that Manuel, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... accordingly rubbed both his hands and feet, and immediately experienced a pleasurable ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... in triumph to show to her aunts, and when dinner was over she carried the volume to her den, and never a young lady in bye-gone days sat down to Don Juan with any more pleasurable anticipation than Mary felt when she buried herself in her easy chair and opened that ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... masticate and swallow. With the unaccustomed flavour of gravy or fruit juice there may be seen on his face a look of hesitation or surprise. In the stolid and placid child these manifestations are as a rule but little marked, and pleasurable sensations clearly predominate. With children of more nervous temperament it is clear that sensations of taste are much more acute. Even in earliest infancy, children have a way of proclaiming their nervous inheritance ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... we must do our utmost to keep you so, and to assist your recovery. Therefore, no more conversation, if you please, until I give you permission. What you now have to do is to remain perfectly quiet and free from all excitement, pleasurable or otherwise. Rest, sleep, take such food and such medicines as I shall order for you, and recover strength as rapidly as possible. Then, when you are sufficiently well to receive visitors, I will permit a few of the many who are now eager to ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... the countenance of a child that longs for some prohibited dainty. At last the Doctor relented, took it down, and indulged himself in the gratification of letting her taste from his hand; his eyes, always expressive in the revelation of pleasurable feelings, luminously and smilingly avowed that it was a gratification; and he prolonged it by so regulating the position of the cup that only a drop at a time could reach the rosy, sipping lips by ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... regret also mingled with her feeling that she, too, could not join the festivities on Monday evening. She had dearly loved society during the little while she had mingled with it, and the pleasurable excitement of the last few days, which kept all the young ladies in a constant flutter, made her long to be ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... saw the hard strain of his face. Slowly her own eyes lost the glow of pleasurable interest and saddened with the realization of ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... certainly enjoyed himself before; in his rambles on the beach, in his daily dip and new experiences of the delights of swimming; in the various little trips he and Nellie had taken; aye, and in the pleasurable occupation of collecting all those strange wonders of the shore, with which they had ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Fultonville, a suburban village of Fonda, about twenty-six miles from Schenectady, Dr. Veeder and Congressman Schermerhorn parted with us, wishing us a pleasurable voyage. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... herself, as he realized, as well as anybody, that the nephew of Richard Smallwood would not be considered a fitting mate for a daughter of the house of Farringdon; but the fact that he did not mention the circumstance in no way prevented him from dwelling upon it in his own mind, and deriving much pleasurable pain and much painful pleasure therefrom. In short, he dwelt upon it so exclusively and so persistently that it went near to breaking his heart; but that was not until his heart was older, and therefore more capable of being ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Charms to Proportion, which is called Taste in Musick, Painting, Poetry, Sculpture, Gardening and Architecture. By which is generally meant that happy Assemblage which excites in our Minds, by Analogy, some pleasurable Image. Thus, for Instance, even the Ruins of an old Castle properly disposed, or the Simplicity of a rough hewn Hermitage in a Rock, enliven a Prospect, by recalling the Moral Images of Valor and Wisdom; and ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen |
