than what I choose."

At any rate, if we have not effected all we wished, we shall have
influenced ourselves. It may be true that one cannot do much. "You are not
Hercules, and you are not able to purge away the wickedness of others; nor
yet are you Theseus, able to drive away the evil things of Attica. But you
may clear away your own. From yourself, from your own thoughts, cast away,
instead of Procrustes and Sciron, [4] sadness, fear, desire, envy,
malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, intemperance. But it is not possible to
eject these things otherwise than by looking to God only, by fixing your
affections on Him only, by being consecrated by his commands." [5]

People sometimes think how delightful it would be to be quite free. But a
fish, as Ruskin says, is freer than a man, and as for a fly, it is "a
black incarnation of freedom." A life of so-called pleasure and
self-indulgence is not a life of real happiness or true freedom. Far from
it, if we once begin to give way to ourselves, we fall under a most
intolerable tyranny. Other temptations are in some respects like that of
drink. At first, perhaps, it seems delightful, but there is bitterness at
the bottom of the cup. Men drink to satisfy the desire created by previous
indulgence. So it is in other things. Repetition soon becomes a craving,
not a pleasure. Resistance grows more and more painful; yielding, which at
first, perhaps, afforded some slight and temporary gratification, soon
ceases to give pleasure, and even if for a time it procures relief, ere
long becomes odious itself.

To resist is difficult, to give way is painful; until at length the
wretched victim to himself, can only purchase, or thinks he can only
purchase, temporary relief from intolerable craving and depression, at the
expense of far greater suffering in the future.