Quotes about Hedonism

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Seeking to eliminate pain nonetheless puts it at the heart of the system. As a result, today we suffer from not wanting to suffer just as one can make oneself ill by trying to be perfectly healthy. Furthermore, we now tell ourselves a strange fable about a society completely devoted to hedonism, and for which everything becomes an irritation, a torture. Unhappiness is not only unhappiness; it is, worse yet, a failure to be happy.

But she who lives for pleasure is dead even while she is still alive.

Over the epitaph of this generation it will say ENTERTAINED TO DEATH.

the promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

It all had to be squeezed and squeezed again, to provide a thrill, to provide enjoyment. What did people mean, with their simply determined enjoying of themselves?

Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. You are quite right to do that, he murmured. Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new Hedonism--that is what our century wants.

The love of pleasure is destined by its very nature to defeat itself and end in frustration.