But in order that you may see whence all this born error of those who accuse pleasure and praise pain, I will open the whole matter, and explain the very things which were said by that discoverer of truth and, as it were, the architect of a happy life. For no one despises or hates or runs away from pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because it results in great pains to those who do not know how to follow pleasure with reason. Nor, moreover, is there anyone who wants to pursue pain because it is pain, to obtain it.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. For to come to the smallest detail, who among us undertakes any exercise of the body which is laborious, except in order that some advantage may follow from it? But who can justly blame him who wants to be in that pleasure which results in no trouble, or he who avoids it in such a way that no pleasure is produced? But in truth we both accuse and bring forth those worthy of just hatred who, softened and corrupted by the caresses of the pleasures of existence, do not foresee the pains and troubles they are about to experience, blinded by lust.
