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“But if any one is revolving in his mind any1 such questions as this—‘of what earthly use it is to us to have attained to the goal of our ambitions if we still have to endure hunger and thirst, toil and care’—he must take this lesson to heart: that good things bring the greater pleasure, in proportion to the toil one undergoes beforehand to attain them; for toil gives a relish to good things; and nothing, however sumptuously prepared, could give pleasure unless a man get it when he needs it.
1 The secret of happiness
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 5 and 6. Walter Miller. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1914.
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