Hedonism: Two Quotes and a Death-Mask

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789.

I am alive, though turned of eighty; still in good health and spirits; codifying like a dragon.

Bentham, age 82, from a letter to a friend.

A death-mask made after Bentham died age 85. (Quote from letter, and image of death-mask, from Laurence Hutton, "A Collection of Death-Masks", in Harper's, October 1892, pp. 781-793).