From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear; he who is free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear.

About this quote

This is verse 212 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called Pleasure — how grief and fear grow from clinging, and cease when clinging ceases.

The Dhammapada is a collection of 423 verses in Pali, among the oldest and most widely read records of the Buddha’s teaching. This English translation is by F. Max Müller (1881), the pioneering Oxford scholar of Indian texts; the verse number is cited with this quote.