What are those good things?
Sensual pleasures, no doubt; for you know no delight of the mind but what arises from the body, and returns to it.

I do not suppose, Velleius, that you are like some of the Epicureans, who are ashamed of those expressions of Epicurus,[101] in which he openly avows that he has no idea of any good separate from wanton and obscene pleasures, which, without a blush, he names distinctly.

What food, therefore, what drink, what variety of music or flowers, what kind of pleasures of touch, what odors, will you offer to the Gods to fill them with pleasures?
The poets indeed provide them with banquets of nectar and ambrosia, and a Hebe or a Ganymede to serve up the cup.

But what is it, Epicurus, that you do for them?
For I do not see from whence your Deity should have those things, nor how he could use them.

Therefore the nature of man is better constituted for a happy life than the nature of the Gods, because men enjoy various kinds of pleasures; but you look on all those pleasures as superficial which delight the senses only by a titillation, as Epicurus calls it.