The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
Pain
Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.
When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.
Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one’s home and family.
The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.
What can be more stupid than to be in pain about future things and absent ones which at present are not felt?
Long for me as I for you, forgetting, what will be inevitable, the long black aftermath of pain.
Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.
One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.