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.

Famous quotes containing the word pleasure:

“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

“Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

“Orsino. There’s for thy pains.
Feste. No pains, sir, I take pleasure in singing, sir.
Orsino. I’ll pay thy pleasure then.
Feste. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)