"Principal Doctrines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epicurus)

8. No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which
produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times
greater than the pleasures themselves.

9. If all pleasure had been capable of accumulation, --
if this had gone on not only be recurrences in time, but all
over the frame or, at any rate, over the principal parts of
human nature, there would never have been any difference
between one pleasure and another, as in fact there is.

10. If the objects which are productive of pleasures to
profligate persons really freed them from fears of the mind,
-- the fears, I mean, inspired by celestial and atmospheric
phenomena, the fear of death, the fear of pain; if, further,
they taught them to limit their desires, we should never
have any fault to find with such persons, for they would
then be filled with pleasures to overflowing on all sides
and would be exempt from all pain, whether of body or mind,
that is, from all evil.

11. If we had never been molested by alarms at
celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the misgiving
that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper
limits of pains and desires, we should have had no need to
study natural science.

12. It would be impossible to banish fear on matters of
the highest importance, if a person did not know the nature
of the whole universe, but lived in dread of what the
legends tell us. Hence without the study of nature there was
no enjoyment of unmixed pleasures.

13. There would be no advantage in providing security
against our fellow humans, so long as we were alarmed by
occurrences over our heads or beneath the earth or in
general by whatever happens in the boundless universe.

14. When tolerable security against our fellow humans
is attained, then on a basis of power sufficient to afford
supports and of material prosperity arises in most genuine
form the security of a quiet private life withdrawn from the
multitude.

15. Nature's wealth at once has its bounds and is easy
to procure; but the wealth of vain fancies recedes to an
infinite distance.

16. Fortune but seldom interferes with the wise person;
his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will