"You're twisting my words on purpose," he says. "I also believe that no one can live pleasantly unless they live honorably too. Animals can't do this — they measure their happiness only by how much food they get. I declare loudly and publicly that the pleasant life I'm talking about requires virtue." But doesn't everyone know that the biggest fools drink most deeply from these pleasures you mention? Vice is packed with enjoyments. The mind creates all kinds of twisted, corrupt pleasures for itself. Take arrogance, for example. Or thinking too highly of yourself. Or pushing ahead of others. Or blindly focusing only on your own interests. Or wasteful luxury. Or getting ridiculously excited about trivial, childish things. Or endless talking. Or the kind of pride that enjoys insulting others. Or laziness. Or the decay of a dull mind that falls asleep on itself.
"You purposely misunderstand what I say," says he, "for I too say that no one can live pleasantly unless he lives honorably also, and this cannot be the case with dumb animals who measure the extent of their happiness by that of their food. I loudly and publicly proclaim that what I call a pleasant life cannot exist without the addition of virtue." Yet who does not know that the greatest fools drink the deepest of those pleasures of yours? or that vice is full of enjoyments, and that the mind itself suggests to itself many perverted, vicious forms of pleasure?—in the first place arrogance, excessive self-esteem, swaggering precedence over other men, a shortsighted, nay, a blind devotion to his own interests, dissolute luxury, excessive delight springing from the most trifling and childish causes, and also talkativeness, pride that takes a pleasure in insulting others, sloth, and the decay of a dull mind which goes to sleep over itself.