Fragments (A.46-A.50)

Nothing is meaner than the love of pleasure, the love of gain, and insolence. Nothing is nobler than magnanimity, meekness, and philanthropy.

[We represent] those intractable philosophers who do not think pleasure to be in itself the natural state of man, but merely an incident of those things in which his natural state consists,—justice, moderation, and freedom. Why, then, should the soul rejoice and be glad in the minor blessings of the body, as Epicurus says, and not be pleased with its own good, which is the very greatest? And yet Nature has given me likewise a sense of shame; and I am covered with blushes, when I think I have uttered any indecent expression. This emotion will not suffer me to recognize pleasure as a good and the end of life.

The ladies at Rome have Plato’s Republic in their hands, because he allows a community of wives; for they attend merely to the words of the author, and not to his sense. For he does not first order one man and one woman to marry and live together, and then allow a community of wives; but he abolishes that system of marriage, and introduces one of another kind. And, in general, men are pleased in

It is the rarest pleasures which especially delight us.

Once exceed moderation, and the most delightful things may become the most undelightful.