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

will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case
of judging between right and wrong opinion.

25. If you do not on every separate occasion refer each
of your actions to the end prescribed by nature, but instead
of this in the act of choice or avoidance swerve aside to
some other end, your acts will not be consistent with your
theories.

26. All such desires as lead to no pain when they
remain ungratified are unnecessary, and the longing is
easily got rid of, when the thing desired is difficult to
procure or when the desires seem likely to produce harm.

27. Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to
ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the
most important is the acquisition of friends.

28. The same conviction which inspires confidence that
nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration,
also enables us to see that even in our limited conditions
of life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship.

29. Of our desires some are natural and necessary
others are natural, but not necessary; others, again, are
neither natural nor necessary, but are due to illusory
opinion.

30. Those natural desires which entail no pain when not
gratified, though their objects are vehemently pursued, are
also due to illusory opinion; and when they are not got rid
of, it is not because of their own nature, but because of
the person's illusory opinion.

31. Natural justice is a symbol or expression of
usefullness, to prevent one person from harming or being
harmed by another.

32. Those animals which are incapable of making
covenants with one another, to the end that they may neither
inflict nor suffer harm, are without either justice or
injustice. And those tribes which either could not or would
not form mutual covenants to the same end are in like case.

33. There never was an absolute justice, but only an
agreement made in reciprocal association in whatever
localities now and again from time to time, providing
against the infliction or suffering of harm.

34. Injustice is not in itself an evil, but only in its