The Lesson One Can Learn From Firbank

The Refractory Pupil Of Socrates, Aristippus The Cyrene, Who Believed Happiness To Be The Sum Of Particular Pleasures And Golden Moments And Not, As Epicurus, A Prolonged Intermediary State Between Ecstasy And Pain.

There Is No Pain Equal To That Which Two Lovers Can Inflict On One Another... It Is When We Begin To Hurt Those Whom We Love That The Guilt With Which We Are Born Becomes Intolerable, And Since All Those Whom We Love Intensely And Continuously Grow Part Of Us, And Since We Hate Ourselves In Them, So We Torture Ourselves And Them Together.

If Our Elaborate And Dominating Bodies Are Given Us To Be Denied At Every Turn, If Our Nature Is Always Wrong And Wicked, How Ineffectual We Are; Like Fishes Not Meant To Swim.

Like Water, We Are Truest To Our Nature In Repose.

Melancholy And Remorse Form The Deep Leaden Keel Which Enables Us To Sail Into The Wind Of Reality; We Run Aground Sooner Than The Flat-bottomed Pleasure-lovers But We Venture Out In Weather That Would Sink Them And We Choose Our Direction.