19. Good health, I doubt not, is more beneficial
to us than bad health is hurtful. Riches bring more delights than
poverty annoyance, the satisfaction in children’s love is greater
than the sorrow at their loss, and youth is more pleasant than old age
is sad. How often is the attainment of one’s wishes a
weariness, and what one has longed for a regret; so that one grieves at
having obtained what one was not afraid of obtaining. But what
fatherland, what pleasures, can compensate for exile and the bitterness
of other penalties? For even when we have
these, the pleasure is weakened either by the
disinclination to use or by the fear of losing them.