I order my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with a gaze equally disciplined and equally firm, but gaily at the one, and severely at the other, and according to its ability, as anxious to extinguish the one as to extend the other. Viewing good things sanely involves viewing bad things sanely. And pain has something not to be avoided in its gentle beginning, and pleasure something to be avoided in its excessive ending. Plato couples them together and holds that it is equally the duty of fortitude to fight against pain and against the immoderate and seductive blandishments of pleasure. They are two fountains: whoever draws the proper amount from the proper one, at the proper time, whether city, man, or beast, he is very fortunate. The first must be taken as medicine and through necessity more sparingly; the other through thirst, but not to drunkenness. Pain, pleasure, love, hatred, are the first things that a child feels; if, when Reason comes they attach themselves to her, that is virtue.

Michel Eyquem De Montaigne