A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the EncheiridionEpictetus
Philosophy
A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
Epictetus
Philosophy -- Early works to 1800
This is the case also with ourselves. What do we admire? Externals.
About what things are we busy? Externals. And have we any doubt then
why we fear or why we are anxious? What then happens when we think the
things, which are coming on us, to be evils? It is not in our power not
to be afraid, it is not in our power not to be anxious. Then we say,
Lord God, how shall I not be anxious? Fool, have you not hands, did not
God make them for you? Sit down now and pray that your nose may not
run. Wipe yourself rather and do not blame him. Well then, has he given
to you nothing in the present case? Has he not given to you endurance?
Has he not given to you magnanimity? Has he not given to you manliness?
When you have such hands do you still look for one who shall wipe your
nose? But we neither study these things nor care for them. Give me a
man who cares how he shall do anything, not for the obtaining of a
thing, but who cares about his own energy. What man, when he is walking
about, cares for his own energy? Who, when he is deliberating, cares
about his own deliberation, and not about obtaining that about which he
deliberates? And if he succeeds, he is elated and says, How well we
have deliberated; did I not tell you, brother, that it is impossible,
when we have thought about anything, that it should not turn out thus?
But if the thing should turn out otherwise, the wretched man is
humbled; he knows not even what to say about what has taken place. Who
among us for the sake of this matter has consulted a seer? Who among us
as to his actions has not slept in indifference? Who? Give (name) to me
one that I may see the man whom I have long been looking for, who is
truly noble and ingenuous, whether young or old; name him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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