“Saul Gorn once told me his theory of asceticism: ‘It is well known that the longer one postpones a pleasure, the greater the pleasure is when one finally gets it. Therefore, if one postpones it for ever, the pleasure should be infinite.'”
Raymond Smullyan 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
“Man must be taught to see things as symbols – must be trained to use them for effect, and never for themselves. Above all, the door of delight must remain firmly closed.”
Some bright young devil's pitch to Satan at a board meeting in Hell in Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb p. 111 (hence Capon’s imagined “Harry” who on p. 112 refuses noodles with the Chicken Paprikash because he’s counting calories. “There are, to be sure, greater blasphemies than that against the goodness of creation; but none illustrates better the fundamental antimaterialism of the age. Harry sits in front of one of the finest and simplest goods in the world, and he begs off, not because he does not like it, but because he has ceased to see it. Noodles, for him, are not unique and delightful beings; they have become an abstract subject called highly caloric food. No matter to him that Martha made the noodles herself – that he has before him something he will not meet again for years: He turns them down precisely because they are, to him, no matter at all. It is calories, not noodles, that count…. How sad, then, to see real beings – Harry and all his fellow calorie counters – living their lives in abject terror of things that do not even go bump in the night.”
“for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects.“
The Tisroc in C.S. Lewis A Horse and His Boy
“Some surviving literary works from this period [Egypt’s First Intermediate Period 2200-2050 BC] betray blank despair; others proclaim a crass hedonism; and still others seek a basis for restoration of social order by insisting upon the necessity of personal righteousness.”
William McNeill The Rise of the West
“A man’s judgement that whisky is bad for him is not invalidated by the fact that when the bottle is at hand he finds desire stronger than reason and succumbs…. Life, in other words, is as habit-forming as cocaine. What then? If I still held creation to be ‘a great injustice’ I should hold that this impulse to retain life aggravates the injustice.”
C.S. Lewis Surprised by Joy (explicitly rejecting G.K. Chesterton's Manalive test that someone who claims to believe life is pointless will object vehemently if you offer to shoot them)
“There are many genuinely good finite things in this world, and even unbelievers can derive much pleasure from them: human love, and music, and the stars and the sea. But ultimately, Pascal is right: these are only well-mixed drinks served aboard the Titanic.”
Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited, Outlined & Explained
“If I had only a single temporal blessing to wish you, I would not hesitate a moment: May you be spared long enough to know at least one evening of old friends, dark bread, good wine, and strong cheese. If even exile be so full, what must not our fullness be?”
Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb