“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”

GIOIA Magazine Interview

4 August 1796
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

The Influence of Literature upon Society (De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les istitutions sociales, 1800) , Pt. 2, ch. 4
Context: The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.

Book II, ch. 1 http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.2.two.html <br class="br">Discourses <br class="br">Variant: For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 10: Of Motives

Death and the Eternal Forever (2014)

"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
Context: Another evil, and one of the worst which arises from the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge, is the fact that a large number of persons, possessed of an inventive turn of mind and of considerable skill in the manual operations of practical mechanics, are destitute of that knowledge of scientific principles which is requisite to prevent their being misled by their own ingenuity. Such men too often spend their money, waste their lives, and it may be lose their reason in the vain pursuits of visionary inventions, of which a moderate amount of theoretical knowledge would be sufficient to demonstrate the fallacy; and for want of such knowledge, many a man who might have been a useful and happy member of society, becomes a being than whom it would be hard to find anything more miserable.
The number of those unhappy persons — to judge from the patent-lists, and from some of the mechanical journals — must be much greater than is generally believed.<!--p. 176

Pearls of Wisdom

Source: Ship of Magic