Difficult Pleasure

Famous quotes containing the words difficult and/or pleasure:

    How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.
    Abigail Adams (1744–1818)

    Sang a bone upon the shore;
    “A man if I but held him so
    When my body was alive
    Found all the pleasure that life gave”:
    A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)