🚀 go-pugleaf

instincts
they form within themselves a confused idea, which hides itself from their
view in the depths of their soul, inciting them to aim at rest through
excitement, and always to fancy that the satisfaction which they have not
will come to them, if, by surmounting whatever difficulties confront them,
they can thereby open the door to rest.

Thus passes away all man's life. Men seek rest in a struggle against
difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.
For we think either of the misfortunes we have or of those which threaten
us. And even if we should see ourselves sufficiently sheltered on all sides,
weariness of its own accord would not fail to arise from the depths of the
heart wherein it has its natural roots and to fill the mind with its poison.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for
weariness from the peculiar state of his disposition; and so frivolous is he
that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such
as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient to amuse him.

But will you say what object has he in all this? The pleasure of bragging
tomorrow among his friends that he has played better than another. So others
sweat in their own rooms to show to the learned that they have solved a
problem in algebra, which no one had hitherto been able to so