Rackham’s 1914 translation interpretation.
I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born
and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great
explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids
pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure
rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves
or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally
circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial
example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage
from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no
annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure? On the
other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and
demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot
