Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that acute pain is the only true evil, as all other forms of suffering diminish over time, highlighting the impact of our emotions on grief.
Mary Wortley Montagu emphasizes the idea that while many forms of suffering exist, only acute pain qualifies as a genuine evil. Other grievances and complaints tend to lessen over time, indicating that much of our grief is tied to our emotional responses. This perspective invites reflection on how our passions and reactions can amplify our distress, making acute physical pain the most significant and persistent source of suffering.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of suffering and how we cope, this quote can illustrate a key point about pain versus emotional distress.
I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!
Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge. . . and the longest life is too short.
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.
I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness but malignity; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted.
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death!
I tell people, and it's the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won't make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won't make you a servant of Christ.
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