Anyone who tries to combine virtue and pleasure — and it's always a lopsided partnership — weakens virtue with pleasure's frailty. They put freedom in chains. Freedom can only stay unconquered when it values nothing above itself. The moment you depend on pleasure, you need Fortune's help. And that's the worst kind of slavery. Your life becomes anxious, suspicious, fearful. You're afraid of accidents and wait in agony for crucial moments. You can't give virtue a solid foundation if you make it stand on something shaky. And what could be shakier than depending on chance and the ups and downs of the body and everything that affects it?
Whoever on the other hand forms an alliance, and that, too, a one-sided one, between virtue and pleasure, clogs whatever strength the one may possess by the weakness of the other, and sends liberty under the yoke, for liberty can only remain unconquered as long as she knows nothing more valuable than herself: for he begins to need the help of Fortune, which is the most utter slavery: his life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, timorous, fearful of accidents, waiting in agony for critical moments of time. You do not afford virtue a solid immoveable base if you bid it stand on what is unsteady: and what can be so unsteady as dependence on mere chance, and the vicissitudes of the body and of those things which act on the body?