But that you may see where all this error of those who accuse pleasure and praise pain comes from, I will open the whole matter, and I will explain the very things that were said by that discoverer of truth and, as it were, the architect of the happy life.

For no one despises or hates or flees pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because great pains follow those who do not know how to follow pleasure with reason. Nor is there anyone who loves, pursues, or wishes to obtain pain because it is pain, but because times of that kind never occur when he seeks some great pleasure through labor and pain.

For to be fair to the smallest, which of us undertakes any laborious exercise of the body, except that he may derive some benefit from it? But who can rightly blame either him who wishes to be in that pleasure which results in no discomfort, or him who flees that pain which produces no pleasure?