My Virtual Reading Room

Two of my favourite passages from the Discourses of Epictetus (which I am now re-reading):

"Only consider at what price you sell your freedom of will.  If you must sell it, man, at least do not sell it cheap.  But the great and pre-eminent deed, perhaps, befits others, Socrates and men of his stamp.--Why then, pray, if we are endowed by nature for such greatness, do not all men, or many, become like him?  What, do all horses become swift, all dogs keen to follow the scent?  What then?  Because I have no natural gifts, shall I on that account give up my discipline?  Far be it from me!  Epictetus will not be better than Socrates; but if only I am not worse, that suffices me.  For I shall not be a Milo, either, and yet I do not neglect my body; nor a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my property; nor, in a word, is there any other field in which we give up the appropriate discipline merely from despair of attaining the highest."

"Come, have you not received faculties that enable you to bear whatever happens?  Have you not received magnanimity?  Have you not received courage?  Have you not received endurance?  And what care I longer for anything that may happen, if I be magnanimous?  What shall perturb me, or trouble me, or seem grievous to me?  Shall I fail to use my faculty to that end for which I have received it, but grieve and lament over events that occur?

'Yes, but my nose is running."  What have you hands for, then, slave?  Is it not that you may wipe your nose? 'Is it reasonable, then, that there should be running noses in the world?' --And how much better it would be for you to wipe your nose than to find fault!"