But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

But indeed we accuse them and bring them to justice with just hatred, who, softened by the flattery of present pleasures, and corrupted by the cares and troubles they are about to experience, blinded by lust, do not foresee, and the like are in fault, who forsake their duties through the indolence of the mind, that is the flight of labors and pains. And indeed the distinction between these things is easy and expedient. For free time, when the choice is open to us and nothing prevents us from doing what pleases us most, every pleasure must be assumed, all pain to be repelled. But at certain times, and either due to duties or the necessities of things, it will often happen that both pleasures are to be rejected and troubles are not to be refused.. And so the choice of these things is held here by a wise man, In order to or rejects the pleasures of the greater the other consequences or enduring pains of pain.