Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 4

you ask, "to be cast into exile, to be reduced to poverty, to carry out children for burial, to lose a spouse, to be afflicted with ignominy, to be weakened?" If you wonder that this is for someone’s benefit, you will wonder that some are cured by iron and fire, and no less by hunger and thirst. But if you consider with yourself that for the sake of a remedy, in some cases, bones are scraped and picked, and veins are extracted, and certain limbs are amputated which could not remain without the destruction of the whole body: you will also suffer it to be proven to you that certain inconveniences are for the benefit of those to whom they happen, just as surely, by Hercules, as certain things which are praised and sought after are against those whom they have delighted; being very similar to indigestions, drunkennesses, and other things which kill through pleasure. Among the many magnificent sayings of our Demetrius, there is also this one,