Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.

And yet in a culture like ours which is given to material comforts and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification it is surprising that so much poetry is written.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience hard work chastity and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

The gratification of desire is not happiness.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

The only sensible ends of literature are first the pleasurable toil of writing second the gratification of one's family and friends and lastly the solid cash.

On the one hand shopping is dependable: You can do it alone if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you you can return it it's instant gratification and yet something you buy may well last for years.