Do you believe that attaining pleasure and happiness are the only things which give life any intrinsic value?

This was a question that I wanted to ask in reference to several of my responses on other sites in the past to other’s related questions. I had read a fair amount of material about hedonistic theory, including the hedonistic paradox. I’ll just use this example here since it covers the basics of hedonistic theory in a condensed format.

I can’t help but correlate happiness with pleasure, and I have considered that we all have different ideas on what would give us pleasure. There are various types of pleasures too, such as the relief of pain or ending of a miserable situation for example. Also, the hedonistic paradox states the people dependent upon attaining maximum pleasure are miserable because one can never truly fulfill such desires, resulting being in a persistent state of unfulfillment. One of the core tenants of Buddhism is the ending of all desire.

It does appear that whether you’re in a Nirvana type state of euphoria/bliss, seeking fulfilling challenges and/or pleasures (long term fulfillment or not), living a life devoted to the service of others (altruistic tendencies), experiencing the love of others, giving out love yourself, etc the fact does appear to remain that we still prefer an existence where we can attain maximum happiness/pleasure, regardless of what this means for each individual. I don’t even see how the Buddhist concept of eliminating all desire even gets around my latter point here.

I suppose what I’m really asking here is whether hedonistic theory after all really is the only one that gives life any intrinsic value, regardless of what your views are on what it takes to be happy. Is it really possible not to desire something?