But so that you may understand where all this error originates—those who accuse pleasure and praise pain—I will lay bare the whole matter, and explain those very things that were said by the inventor of truth and, as it were, the architect of the blessed life. For no one would endure, hate, or flee from the struggle itself simply because it is pleasurable, but because great pains follow those who do not know how to pursue pleasure with reason. Nor is there anyone who loves pain itself simply because it is pain.
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to face only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn anything.
For there are times when one must endure great labor and pain to attain some great pleasure. For, to put it mildly, who among us would willingly subject their body to such toil unless some benefit were to result from it? But who would justly reproach him who seeks to be in that pleasure from which no trouble arises, or him who flees from that which brings no pleasure? Indeed, we accuse them and regard with just hatred those who, through the allure of present pleasures, are corrupted by them—those pains and those things.
