under that action.

    It is not disgraceful for man to yield to pain, and it is
disgraceful to yield to pleasure. This is not because pain comes to us
from without, and we ourselves seek pleasure; for it is possible to
seek pain, and yield to it purposely, without this kind of baseness.
Whence comes it, then, that reason thinks it honourable to succumb
under stress of pain, and disgraceful to yield to the attack of
pleasure? It is because pain does not tempt and attract us. It is we
ourselves who choose it voluntarily, and will it to prevail over us.
So that we are masters of the situation; and in this man yields to
himself. But in pleasure it is man who yields to pleasure. Now only
mastery and sovereignty bring glory, and only slavery brings shame.

    161. Vanity.- How wonderful it is that a thing so evident as the
vanity of the world is so little known, that it is a strange and
surprising thing to say that it is foolish to seek greatness?

    162. He who will know fully the vanity of man has only to consider
the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je ne sais quoi
(Corneille), and the effects are dreadful. This je ne sais quoi, so
small an object that we cannot recognise it, agitates a whole country,
princes, armies, the entire world.

    Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the
world would have been altered.

    163. Vanity.- The cause and the effects of love: Cleopatra.

    164. He who does not see the vanity of the world is himself very
vain. Indeed who do not see it but youths who are absorbed in fame,
diversion, and the thought of the future? But take away diversion, and
you will see them dried up with weariness. They feel then their
nothingness without knowing it; for it is indeed to be unhappy to be
in insufferable sadness as soon as we are reduced to thinking of
self and have no diversion.

    165. Thoughts.- In omnibus requiem quaesivi.* If our condition
were truly happy, we not need diversion from thinking of it in order
to make ourselves happy.

    * Ecclus. 24. 11. "With all these I have sought rest."

    166. Diversion.- Death is easier to bear without thinking of it
than is the thought of death without peril.

    167. The miseries of human life has established all this: as men
have seen this, they have taken up diversion.

    168. Diversion.- As men are not able to fight against death,
misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be
happy, not to think of them at all.

    169. Despite these miseries, man wishes to be happy, and only
wishes to be happy, and cannot wish not to be so. But how will he
set about it? To be happy he would have to make himself immortal; but,
not being able to do so, it has occurred to him to prevent himself
from thinking of death.

    170. Diversion.- If man were happy, he would be the more so, the
less he was diverted, like the Saints and God. Yes; but is it not to
be happy to have a faculty of being amused by diversion? No; for
that comes from elsewhere and from without, and thus is dependent, and
therefore subject to be disturbed by a thousand accidents, which bring
inevitable griefs.

    171. Misery.- The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is
diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is
this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and
which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in
a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a
more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and
leads us unconsciously to death.

    172. We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate
the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course;
or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent
are we that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not think
of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we
dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that
which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We
conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and, if it be
delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain
it by the future and think of arranging matters which are not in our
power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching.

    Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all
occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the
present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to
arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the
present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never
live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be
happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.

    173. They say that eclipses foretoken misfortune, because
misfortunes are common, so that, as evil happens so often, they
often foretell it; whereas if they said that they predict good
fortune, they would often be wrong. They attribute good fortune only
to rare conjunctions of the heavens; so they seldom fail in
prediction.