Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.
Anything that has a relationship with pleasure, we reject it. Eating, they talk about cholesterol; making love, they talk about AIDS; you talk about smoking, they talk about cancer. It's a very sick society that rejects pleasure.
The enjoyment we get from something is powerfully influenced by what we think that thing really is. This is true for intellectual pleasures, such as the appreciation of paintings and stories, and it is true as well for pleasures that seem simpler and more animalistic, such as the satisfaction of hunger and lust.
There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.
Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in frame, unlimited in space and indefinite in duration.
A real pleasure is a pleasure that one enjoys by one's self, without a companion, and without a single argument.
People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain.
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.