Pain itself is love, the main thing is that the pain may please someone.
Some of our business we accuse with justice of having been born, and with righteous hatred,
of being troubled in such a way that we are never chosen to obtain pleasure.
Unless someone escapes, blinded by lust, so that they do not foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue;
and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.
These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best,
every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided.
He wants to be loved by means of these very pains and annoyances, and he achieves his end.
But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business
it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted.
The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures,
or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.
Pain itself is love, the main thing is that the pain may please someone.
Some of our business we accuse with justice of having been born, and with righteous hatred,
of being troubled in such a way that we are never chosen to obtain pleasure. Unless someone escapes, blinded by lust,
so that they do not foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will,
which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish.
In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided.
He wants to be loved by means of these very pains and annoyances,
and he achieves his end. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business
it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted.