Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​And that the virtues are chosen for the sake of pleasure, not for their own sake, just as medicine is chosen for the sake of health, as Diogenes also says in the twentieth book of his Selected Essays, who also calls education a "way of life." But Epicurus says that virtue alone is inseparable from pleasure, whereas the other things are separated from it, such as food. Come then, let us now place the crowning touch, as one might say, upon the whole treatise and upon the life of the philosopher, by setting down his Principal Doctrines and closing the entire composition with them, having used the beginning of happiness as our end.

[I.] That which is blessed and immortal neither has troubles of its own nor provides them to another, so that it is possessed neither by angers nor by favors; for everything of this sort resides in weakness. [In other works he says that the gods are contemplated by reason, some existing numerically, others in virtue of likeness of form, arising from the continuous influx of similar images directed to the same realization in human shape.] [II.] Death is nothing to us; for what has been dissolved lacks perception, and what lacks perception is nothing to us. [III.] The limit of the magnitude of pleasures is the removal of all that causes pain. And wherever that which feels pleasure is present, for whatever time it may be there, there is no pain or grief or both together.

[IV.] That which causes pain does not continuously linger in the flesh, but extreme pain is present for the shortest time, while that which merely surpasses the pleasure in the flesh does not remain for many days. And prolonged illnesses have in the flesh an excess of what is pleasurable over what causes pain. [V.] It is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honorably, and justly, nor to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly. But he to whom this is not present, from which it is possible to live prudently, honorably, and justly, cannot live pleasantly.

[VI.] For the sake of gaining confidence from men, it was a natural good—whatever means through which one might ever be able to procure this. [VII.] Some men wished to become famous and conspicuous, thinking that they would in this way secure safety from men. So if the life of such men is safe, they have received the good of nature; but if it is not safe, they do not possess that for the sake of which they initially felt desire according to what is congenial to nature. [VIII.] No pleasure is in itself an evil; but the producers of certain pleasures bring on annoyances many times greater than the pleasures.

[IX.] If every pleasure were condensed, both in time and throughout the entire composite or the most sovereign parts of nature, pleasures would never differ from one another. [X.] If the things producing the pleasures of the profligate dissipated the fears of the mind concerning celestial phenomena, death, and pains, and further taught the limit of desires, we would never have anything with which to reproach them, as they would be filled on every side with pleasures and having from no side either pain or grief, which is the evil. [XI.] If our apprehensions concerning celestial phenomena had not troubled us at all, nor those concerning death, lest it be something to us, and further our failure to comprehend the limits of pains and desires, we would have had no need of natural philosophy.