Pleasure
Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria. In psychology, the pleasure principle describes pleasure as a positive feedback mechanism, motivating the organism to recreate in the future the situation which it has just found pleasurable. According to this theory, organisms are similarly motivated to avoid situations that have caused pain in the past.
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Famous quotes containing the word pleasure:
“If variety is capable of filling every hour of the married state with the highest joy, then might it be said that Lord and Lady Dellwyn were completely blessed, for every idea that had the power of raising pleasure in the bosom of the one, depressed that of the other with sorrow and affliction.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Frau Stöhr ... began to talk about how fascinating it was to cough.... Sneezing was much the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply couldn’t stand it any longer; you looked as if you were tipsy; you drew a couple of breaths, then out it came, and you forgot everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the explosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of pleasure life gave you free of charge.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)