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Pleasure has ever more been represented by poets and by painters as clothed in perpetual smiles and adorned with the richest jewels; and in real life, we have known many who, allured by her deceptions, blandishments, and hollow but showy temptations, have followed as she pointed until ruin has befallen them.

The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.