desire. But these gentlemen account it the highest accomplishment
of a philosopher to have a clear and retentive memory of all the
various figures, passions, and touches of past pleasure. We will
not now say, they present us with nothing worthy the name of
philosophy, while they leave the refuse of pleasure in their wise
man's mind, as if it could be a lodging for bodies; but that it is
impossible such things as these should make a man live pleasurably,
I think is abundantly manifest from hence.

For it will not perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the memory
of pleasure past brings no pleasure with it if it appeared but
little in the very enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to
account it for their benefit to retire from its first approaches;
when even the most amazed and sensual admirers of corporeal
delights remain no longer in their gaudy and pleasant humor than
their pleasure lasts them. What remains is but an empty shadow and
dream of that pleasure that hath now taken wing and is fled from
them, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires.
Like as in those that dream they are a-dry or in love, their
unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the
inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance
of past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but
must serve only, with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very
much of outrage and stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble
and befooling pleasure. Neither doth it befit men of continence
and sobriety to exercise their thoughts about such poor things, or
to do what one twitted Carneades with, to reckon, as out of a
diurnal, how oft they have lain with Hedia or Leontion, or where
they last drank Thasian wine, or at what twentieth-day feast they
had a costly supper. For such transport and captivatedness of the