Pleasure

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:

    We lov’d, and we lov’d, as long as we could,
    Till our love was lov’d out in us both;
    But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
    ‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.
    John Dryden (1631–1700)

    Here in the country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that go a-fishing on a rainy day; but there it appeared as if every able-bodied man and helpful boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure excursion in their yachts, and all would at last land and have a chowder on the Cape.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    It’s a pleasure to share one’s memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time. We know it now. Because it’s in the past; because we have survived.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)