But that you may see from where all this error of those who accuse pleasure and praise pain arises, 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 blessed 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 itself because it is pain, but because such times as these occur not infrequently that he seeks some great pleasure through labor and pain. For, to be fair to the smallest, who of us undertakes any laborious exercise of the body, except that he may derive some benefit from it?