There is something self-defeating in the too-conscious pursuit of pleasure.

Eastman’s line points to a familiar paradox: pleasure tends to recede when it becomes an object of anxious calculation. The “too-conscious pursuit” suggests self-monitoring, performance, and instrumental thinking—treating enjoyment as a goal to be optimized rather than an experience to be entered. That stance can introduce tension, comparison, and disappointment, which blunt spontaneity and make satisfaction harder to reach. The remark also implies an ethical or psychological critique of hedonism when it becomes programmatic: the more one tries to force pleasure, the more one risks undermining the conditions (ease, absorption, openness) that allow pleasure to arise naturally.