Lady Wisdom will be your close friend; and Brother Knowledge will be your pleasant companion.

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

"Smartass Disciple: Please teach me about the truth, master.

I am no faint-heart when it comes to the unpleasant truth. Indeed I have always taken a bracing sort of pleasure in facing it.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

A man without pleasure is a man without any idea what life is about

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

Where joy grows deep, sorrow must deepen; the greater one's pleasures, the greater the pain.

I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago

On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.

I've been working hard at assuming Court polish, but the more I learn about what really goes on behind the pretty voices and waving fans and graceful bows, the more I comprehend that what is really said matters little, so long as the manner in which it is said pleases. I understand it, but I don't like it. Were I truly influential, then I would halt this foolishness that decrees that in Court one cannot be sick; that to admit you are sick is really to admit to political or social or romantic defeat; that to admit to any emotions usually means one really feels the opposite. It is a terrible kind of falsehood that people can only claim feelings as a kind of social weapon.

The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

Whether your pleasing or pissing everybody off, your doing something wrong.

I been silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters - the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go.

Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

Watching my parents I've learnt a lesson many do not recognize. True love is not signaled by romantic, candle light dinners, red roses glistening with dew, or even Valentine's day celebrations. While these things may accompany our feelings, love is truly more than all those! Love is being with your spouse even when its not pleasing. Sometimes, love is walking down the hall, with your spouse hanging onto your shoulders and walking at a turtle's pace down the hall, just because surgery made life a burden. Love is patient, love is kind, love is Jesus! May we always remember love is not always tied in bows!?

A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

In moments of pleasure and pain, during a celebration or a state of calm, when love arrives or says goodbye, evolve with a dance.

I rarely do what is expected of me, not to cause reaction but to please myself rather than others.

Your problems in life start. When you do things in your life to be seen by other people and for other people and not doing it for yourself pleasure, accomplishment, satisfaction, achievement or success.

Sharp-eyed gratitude never fails to see Grace revealed in multiple ways. And it never fails to inspire us to express appreciation for the pleasant things in our life, and to be thankful for the unpleasant things we are shielded from.