1914 Translation by H. Rackham

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, Lorem Ipsum is not sim­ply ran­dom text. It has roots in a piece of clas­si­cal Latin lit­er­a­ture from 45 BC, mak­ing it over 2000 years old. Richard McClin­tock, a Latin pro­fes­sor at Ham­p­den-Syd­ney Col­lege in Vir­ginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, con­secte­tur, from a Lorem Ipsum pas­sage, and going through the cites of the word in clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture, dis­cov­ered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sec­tions 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bono­rum et Mal­o­rum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, writ­ten in 45 BC. This book is a trea­tise on the the­o­ry of ethics, very pop­u­lar dur­ing the Renais­sance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in sec­tion 1.10.32.
“On the oth­er hand, we denounce with right­eous indig­na­tion and dis­like men who are so beguiled and demor­al­ized by the charms of plea­sure of the moment, so blind­ed by desire, that they can­not fore­see the pain and trou­ble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weak­ness of will, which is the same as say­ing through shrink­ing from toil and pain. These cas­es are per­fect­ly sim­ple and easy to dis­tin­guish. In a free hour, when our pow­er of choice is untram­melled and when noth­ing pre­vents our being able to do what we like best, every plea­sure is to be wel­comed and every pain avoid­ed. But in cer­tain cir­cum­stances and owing to the claims of duty or the oblig­a­tions of busi­ness it will fre­quent­ly occur that plea­sures have to be repu­di­at­ed and annoy­ances accept­ed. The wise man there­fore always holds in these mat­ters to this prin­ci­ple of selec­tion: he rejects plea­sures to secure oth­er greater plea­sures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, con­secte­tur adip­isic­ing elit, sed do eius­mod tem­por inci­didunt ut labore et dolore magna ali­qua. Ut enim ad min­im veni­am, quis nos­trud exerci­ta­tion ullam­co laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea com­mo­do con­se­quat. Duis aute irure dolor in rep­re­hen­der­it in volup­tate velit esse cil­lum dolore eu fugiat nul­la pariatur. Excep­teur sint occae­cat cup­i­datat non proident, sunt in cul­pa qui offi­cia deserunt mol­lit anim id est labo­rum.”