/lit/ - Literature

>But that which checks or arrests the will is something positive; it proclaims its own presence. All pleasure consists in merely removing this check - in other words, in freeing us from its action; and hence pleasure is a state which can never last very long.

>This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted from Aristotle ("not pleasure, but freedom from pain, is what the wise man will aim at"), which bids us direct our aim, not toward securing what is pleasurable and agreeable in life, but toward avoiding, as far as possible, its innumerable evils. If this were not the right course to take, that saying of Voltaire's, Happiness is but a dream and sorrow is real, would be as false as it is, in fact, true.


Is he right?