What is 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:

    Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practise deception themselves.
    Elias Canetti (b. 1905)

    Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee,
    An’ let poor, damned bodies bee;
    I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie,
    Ev’n to a deil,
    To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me,
    An’ hear us squeel!
    Robert Burns (1759–1796)

    Did ye not hear it?—No; ‘twas but the wind,
    Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;
    On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
    No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
    To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)