The Enchiridion
1. What Is in Our Power
Some things are in our power, and others are not. In our power are our opinions, our movement toward a thing, our desires and aversions, and, in a word, whatever we ourselves do. Our body, property, reputation, and public offices, including the power of a magistrate, are not in our power; nor is anything else that is not our own act. Things in our power are naturally free, unrestrained, and unhindered. Things outside our power are weak, subject to others, and liable to restraint.
Remember this: if you regard what is naturally subject to others as free, or what belongs to others as your own, you will meet obstruction, lament, and be disturbed. You will blame both gods and people. But if you regard only what is yours as yours, and what belongs to another as another’s, no one will compel or hinder you. You will blame or accuse no one, do nothing against your will, suffer no harm from anyone, and have no enemy, since no one will be able to harm you.
If you aim at such great things, remember that a slight effort will not secure them. You must leave some things entirely alone and put others aside for now. If you also want public office and wealth, perhaps you will not even obtain those, because you are pursuing the former things as well. You will certainly miss the things that alone secure happiness and freedom. So practice saying at once to every harsh impression: “You are an impression and not at all what you appear to be.” Then examine it by the rules you have, first and especially by asking whether it concerns something in your power or something outside it. If it concerns what is outside your power, be ready to say, “It does not concern me.”
2. Desire and Aversion
Remember that desire holds out the hope of obtaining what you desire, while aversion holds out the hope of avoiding what you try to escape. Whoever fails to obtain what he desires is unfortunate; whoever falls into what he tries to avoid is unhappy. If, then, you avoid only what is contrary to nature and within your power, you will encounter none of the things you avoid. But if you try to avoid disease, death, or poverty, you will be unhappy.
Withdraw aversion from everything outside your power and direct it toward what is contrary to nature within your power. For the present, suspend desire altogether. If you desire something outside your power, you are bound to be unfortunate; and nothing among the things within your power that would be good to desire is yet before you. Use only your movement toward or away from things, and do even this lightly, with reservations and without insistence.
3. Remember What You Love
Whenever something pleases you, meets a need, or is dear to you, add a thought about what it is by nature. Begin with the smallest things. If you love an earthen vessel, say, “I love an earthen vessel.” Then you will not be disturbed when it breaks. When you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being. Then, if your wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed.
4. Prepare for the Bath
Before undertaking anything, remind yourself what kind of undertaking it is. If you are going to bathe, picture what happens at the baths: people splash water, shove one another, insult one another, and steal. You will undertake the visit more securely if you say, “I intend to bathe and to keep my will in accord with nature.”
Do the same in every activity. Then, if something prevents you from bathing, you can say, “Bathing was not my only intention. I also intended to keep my will in accord with nature. I will fail to do that if I am vexed by what happens.”
5. Events and Our Judgments
People are disturbed by their opinions about events, not by the events themselves. Death, for example, is not terrible. If it were, it would have appeared terrible to Socrates. What is terrible is the opinion that death is terrible. So when we are obstructed, disturbed, or grieved, let us blame our own opinions rather than other people. Someone without instruction blames others for his bad condition. Someone beginning to learn blames himself. Someone whose instruction is complete blames neither another person nor himself.
6. What Is Truly Yours
Do not take pride in an excellence that belongs to someone else. If a horse proudly said, “I am beautiful,” one might put up with it. But when you say with pride, “I have a beautiful horse,” recognize that you are proud of having a fine horse. What is your own? Your use of impressions. When that use accords with nature, you may take pride in it, because you are taking pride in a good that is yours.
7. The Ship’s Call
When a ship reaches port and you go ashore for water, you may amuse yourself by picking up a shellfish or a bulb along the way. But keep your mind on the ship and watch for the captain’s call. When he calls, throw those things aside at once, lest you be bound and tossed aboard like a sheep.
So it is in life. If a wife and child are given to you in place of a little bulb and a shell, nothing prevents you from taking them. But when the captain calls, run to the ship and leave them without looking back. If you are old, do not even go far from the ship, lest you fail to answer when called.
8. Wish Events as They Are
Do not demand that events happen as you wish. Wish instead for them to happen as they do, and your life will flow tranquilly.
9. What Injury Can Reach
Disease impedes the body, but it does not impede the will unless the will chooses to let it. Lameness impedes the leg, but not the will. Say the same of everything that happens. You will find that it impedes something else, but not yourself.
10. Meet Each Event with Its Power
Whenever something happens, turn inward and ask what capacity you have for dealing with it. If you see an attractive man or woman, you will find self-restraint. If hard work or pain comes, you will find endurance. If you meet abusive words, you will find patience. Form this habit, and impressions will not carry you away.
11. What Has Been Returned
Never say of anything, “I have lost it.” Say, “I have returned it.” Has your child died? The child has been returned. Has your wife died? She has been returned. Has your estate been taken? That too has been returned.
“But the man who took it is bad.” What does it matter to you through whose hands the giver asked for it back? While you are allowed to keep it, care for it as something belonging to another, as travelers care for their lodging at an inn.
12. The Price of Tranquility
If you mean to improve, discard thoughts such as, “If I neglect my affairs, I will have no means of living,” or “Unless I punish my slave, he will behave badly.” It is better to die of hunger free from grief and fear than to live in plenty while disturbed. It is better for your slave to behave badly than for you to be unhappy.
Begin with small things. Has some oil been spilled? Has a little wine been stolen? Say, “This is the price of freedom from disturbance; this is the price of tranquility.” Nothing is had for nothing. When you call your slave, remember that he may not hear you or, hearing you, may not do what you want. He is not in such a strong position that your peace of mind should depend on him; your own position is secure.
13. Accept Being Thought Foolish
If you want to improve, be willing to appear senseless and foolish about external things. Be willing to seem ignorant. If anyone thinks you important, distrust yourself. It is hard to keep your will in accord with nature while also securing external things. Care for one, and you must neglect the other.
14. Freedom from Another’s Power
If you want your children, wife, and friends to live forever, you are foolish. You want what is outside your power to be within it and what belongs to others to be yours. Likewise, if you want your slave to have no faults, you want badness to be something other than badness.
But you can avoid failing in your desires. Practice what is within your power. A person is master over another when he can grant or take away what that other person wants or fears. Whoever wishes to be free must neither desire nor avoid anything that depends on others. Otherwise, he must be a slave.
15. Conduct at a Banquet
Behave in life as you would at a banquet. When a dish comes around to you, reach out and take a portion with proper decorum. If it passes by, do not hold it back. If it has not reached you, do not send your desire after it; wait until it comes. Do the same with children, a wife, public office, and wealth. In time you will be a worthy guest at the gods’ banquet.
If you take none of the things set before you, and even despise them, you will be more than a guest of the gods: you will share in their power. By acting this way, Diogenes, Heraclitus, and others like them deserved to be called divine.
16. Sympathy without Inner Lament
When you see someone weeping because a child has gone abroad or died, or because he has lost property, take care that the impression does not carry you away as though the external event itself were harming him. Make the distinction at once: it is not the event that afflicts him, since the same event does not afflict everyone, but his opinion about it. Do not hesitate to sympathize with him in words, and even to lament with him if the occasion calls for it. But take care not to lament inwardly as well.
17. Act the Part Given You
Remember that you are an actor in a play chosen by its author. If it is short, your part is short; if long, long. If he wants you to play a poor man, a lame man, a magistrate, or a private citizen, play the part naturally and well. Your duty is to perform the role you are given. Choosing it belongs to another.
18. An Omen and Its Use
When a raven croaks in a way that seems ominous, do not let the impression carry you away. Make the distinction at once: “None of this signifies harm to me. It may concern my poor body, my small property, my reputation, my children, or my wife. But every sign is favorable to me if I choose, because whatever happens, I can make good use of it.”
19. Choose a Contest You Can Win
You can be invincible if you enter no contest whose outcome is outside your power. When you see someone honored above others, powerful, or highly regarded, beware of assuming that he is happy. If good lies in what is within our power, envy and jealousy have no place in us. You will not wish to be a general, a presiding official, or a consul, but a free person. There is only one way to that freedom: disregard what is outside your power.
20. The Opinion behind Insult
The person who reviles or strikes you does not insult you by that act alone. Your opinion that the act is insulting does. When someone provokes you, know that your own opinion has provoked you. Above all, try not to be swept away by the first impression. Gain a little time, and you will more easily master yourself.
21. Keep Mortality in View
Keep death, exile, and everything else that seems dreadful before your eyes each day, death most of all. Then you will never think anything base or desire anything extravagantly.
22. Endure Ridicule
If you seek philosophy, prepare to be laughed at. Many will sneer, “He has suddenly come back to us a philosopher,” or “Where did he get that superior look?” Do not put on a superior look. Hold fast to what seems best to you, as someone appointed by God to this station. If you remain true to the same principles, those who first mocked you will later admire you. If they overpower you, you will earn ridicule twice over.
23. Be a Philosopher to Yourself
If you ever turn toward external things to please someone, know that you have abandoned your purpose. Be content in everything to be a philosopher. If you also want to appear one to someone else, appear so to yourself; that you can do.
24. Service without Office
Do not be troubled by the thought, “I will live without honor, a nobody everywhere.” If lack of honor is an evil, another person cannot put you into evil any more than another can make you do something base. Is gaining office or an invitation to a banquet your business? Certainly not. How, then, is lacking them dishonor? How can you be nobody when the only things in which you ought to be somebody are within your power, and there you may be of the greatest worth?
“But my friends will have no help from me!” What do you mean by help? They will get no money from you, and you will not make them Roman citizens? Who told you that such things are in our power rather than in the power of others? Who can give another what he does not himself possess? “Then get money,” your friends say, “so we can have some too.” Show me how to get it while remaining modest, faithful, and generous in spirit, and I will. But if you ask me to surrender goods of my own so that you may obtain things that are not good, consider how unfair and foolish that is. Which would you rather have, money or a faithful, modest friend? Help me become such a friend. Do not ask me to do what would destroy that character.
“But my country, as far as it depends on me, will go without my help.” Again, what help? It will have no porticoes or baths built by you? A smith does not supply it with shoes, nor a shoemaker with weapons. It is enough that each person fully performs his own work. If you gave your country another faithful, modest citizen, would that not benefit it? “Yes.” Then you cannot be useless to it. “What position will I hold in the city?” Whatever position you can hold without losing your faithfulness and modesty. If you lose them in the effort to serve the state, what benefit would you be to it, even if you gained office as a shameless, faithless man?
25. The Price of Invitations
Has someone else been preferred to you at a banquet, greeted before you, or invited to a consultation? If these are good things, rejoice that he has received them. If they are bad, do not grieve that you have not. Remember, too, that you cannot refuse to do what another does to gain things outside your power and still expect an equal share. How could you, when you do not visit a powerful man’s door, accompany him when he goes out, or praise and flatter him as the other person does? You would be unjust and insatiable if you wanted such things without paying their price.
What is the price of lettuce? Perhaps an obol. Someone pays the obol and gets the lettuce. You keep your obol and get no lettuce. Do not think you have less: he has the lettuce, and you have the obol you did not spend. Likewise, you were not invited to a man’s feast because you did not pay his price. He sells it for praise and personal attention. Pay that price if it serves your interest. But wanting the feast without paying it is insatiable and foolish. Have you nothing in its place? You have your freedom from flattering a man you did not choose to flatter, and from enduring his manner when he enters the room.
26. Judge Your Own Loss as Another’s
We can learn the will of nature from cases in which our judgments agree. When a neighbor’s slave breaks his cup, we readily say, “Such things happen.” Know that when your own cup breaks, you should think as you did about your neighbor’s.
Carry this thought to greater losses. When another person’s child or wife dies, everyone says, “This happens to human beings.” But when it is his own child or wife, the man immediately cries, “Woe is me! How wretched I am!” We ought to remember how we respond when the same thing happens to others.
27. Evil Is Not the Aim
Just as a target is not set up in order to be missed, the nature of evil does not exist in the world.
28. Guard Your Understanding
If someone intended to hand over your body to every person he met on the road, you would be indignant. Yet you hand your understanding over to anyone you meet, allowing his insults to disturb and trouble it. Are you not ashamed?
29. Consider the Whole Undertaking
Before any undertaking, consider what comes before it and what follows it. Only then proceed. Otherwise, you will begin eagerly without considering the consequences, and later, when disgraceful things appear, you will shrink from them in shame.
Someone wants to win at the Olympic Games. I would like that too, for it is a fine thing. But consider everything before and after the contest. Then begin. You must follow a strict regimen, eat as directed, abstain from delicacies, exercise when told in heat and cold, and forgo cold water or wine whenever you please. You must give yourself over to your trainer as you would to a physician. Then you may enter the contest. You may strain your hand, dislocate your ankle, swallow plenty of dust, suffer a flogging, and still be defeated. Consider all this; if you still choose to compete, go ahead.
Otherwise, you will behave like children who play at being wrestlers one moment, flute players the next, then gladiators, trumpeters, and actors in tragedy. You too will be an athlete, then a gladiator, then an orator, then a philosopher, but nothing with your whole soul. Like an ape, you imitate whatever you see, and one thing after another pleases you. You have undertaken nothing thoughtfully or examined it carefully; you have acted carelessly, with a halfhearted desire. Some see a philosopher or hear a speaker like Euphrates, and who can speak as he does? At once they want to become philosophers themselves.
My friend, first consider what the thing is. Then examine your own nature and whether you can sustain the role. Do you want to be a pentathlete or a wrestler? Look at your arms and thighs; examine your loins. People are differently fitted by nature. Do you think you can follow philosophy yet eat and drink as before, or indulge the same dislikes? You must pass sleepless nights, endure toil, leave your relatives, be despised by a slave, and take the inferior place in honor, office, the courts, and every small matter. Consider whether you are willing to exchange these for freedom from passions, liberty, and tranquility.
If not, beware of behaving like a child: philosopher now, then a servant of the tax collectors, then an orator, then a manager for Caesar. These roles do not fit together. You must be one person, good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or external things, practice your skill either within or without. You must take the position of a philosopher or that of an ordinary person.
30. Duties Follow Relationships
Our duties are measured by our relationships. Is someone your father? You are to care for him, yield to him in all things, and submit even when he reproaches or strikes you. “But he is a bad father.” Were you related by nature to a good father, or to a father?
Does your brother wrong you? Maintain your own position toward him. Do not examine what he is doing, but what you must do to keep your will in accord with nature. Another person will not harm you unless you choose to regard yourself as harmed; you are harmed when you think you are. In the same way, consider the relationships of neighbor, citizen, and general, and you will discover the duty each involves.
31. Piety and the Gods
The first thing in piety toward the gods is to hold right opinions about them: that they exist and govern the whole well and justly. Commit yourself to obeying them, yielding to all that happens and willingly following it as the work of the wisest intelligence. Then you will neither blame the gods nor accuse them of neglecting you.
You can do this only by turning away from what is outside your power and locating good and evil solely in what is within it. If you regard anything outside your power as good or bad, then when you fail to get what you want or meet what you fear, you must blame and hate those you see as responsible. Every creature naturally flees what seems harmful and its causes, and pursues and admires what seems useful and its causes. Someone who believes himself harmed cannot delight in what he thinks caused the harm, any more than he can delight in the harm itself.
This is why a son reviles his father when the father gives him no share of things he takes to be good. The belief that royal power was good made Polynices and Eteocles enemies. For the same reason, the farmer, sailor, and merchant revile the gods, as do those who lose wives or children. Where people place their interest, there also they place their piety.
So anyone who takes care to desire and avoid as he ought also takes care for piety. Everyone should make libations, offer sacrifices, and present firstfruits according to ancestral custom, doing so purely, without meanness, carelessness, stinginess, or expense beyond one’s means.
32. When to Seek Divination
When you consult a diviner, remember that you do not know the outcome and have come to ask about it. But if you are a philosopher, you already know what kind of thing the outcome is. If it is outside your power, it can be neither good nor bad. Bring neither desire nor aversion to the diviner, or you will come in fear. Decide instead that whatever happens is indifferent in itself and does not concern your good. Whatever it is, you can use it well, and no one can prevent that. Then approach the gods confidently as advisers. When advice comes, remember whom you consulted and whom you disregard if you disobey.
As Socrates said, seek divination in matters where the whole inquiry concerns the outcome, and neither reason nor any other skill provides the means of knowing it. When you ought to share a friend’s danger or your country’s, do not ask a diviner whether you should do so. Even if he says the sacrificial signs are unfavorable, that signifies death, bodily injury, or exile. Reason nevertheless requires you to share their dangers even at those risks. Heed the greater diviner, the Pythian God, who expelled from his temple the man who failed to help a friend being murdered.
33. A Rule for Daily Conduct
Set yourself a character and a manner of life at once, and keep to it both alone and in company.
As a rule, be silent, or say only what is necessary in few words. Speak more rarely, when the occasion calls for it. Avoid the usual topics: gladiators, horse races, athletes, food, and drink. Above all, do not discuss people by blaming, praising, or comparing them. If you can, turn your companions’ conversation toward what is proper. If you find yourself among strangers and cannot do this, remain silent.
Do not laugh often, at many things, or excessively. Refuse to swear an oath altogether if you can, and as far as you can if you cannot.
Avoid banquets given by strangers or by people without instruction. If an occasion arises to attend, watch yourself carefully so that you do not slip into their habits. If your companion is impure, the one who keeps company with him must become impure too, even if he was pure before.
Use bodily necessities only as necessities: food, drink, clothing, a house, and slaves. Exclude what serves display or luxury. Abstain from sexual pleasure with women before marriage as far as you can. If you do engage in it, keep to what custom allows. Do not be disagreeable to those who do so or reproach them, and do not repeatedly boast of your own abstinence.
If someone tells you another person speaks ill of you, do not answer the accusation. Say, “He did not know my other faults, or he would not have mentioned only these.”
You need not go to the theater often. If there is a proper occasion, do not take anyone’s side but your own: wish only for what happens to happen, and for the winner to win. Then you will meet no obstruction. Refrain entirely from shouting, laughing at any person or thing, and violent excitement. Afterward, do not talk much about the performance, except where it may help your own improvement. Much talk about it shows excessive admiration for the spectacle.
Do not readily attend people’s recitations or visit them for that purpose. If you do attend, remain grave and composed, while avoiding disagreeable behavior.
Before meeting anyone, especially someone thought to have higher standing, consider what Socrates or Zeno would do in those circumstances. Then you will know how to make proper use of the encounter. Before visiting someone with great power, expect that he may be out, that you may be excluded, that his door may remain closed, or that he may take no interest in you. If visiting him is nevertheless your duty, bear what happens. Never tell yourself, “It was not worth the trouble.” That is the thought of someone offended by external things.
In company, do not talk too much about your own deeds or dangers. Recounting them pleases you more than hearing them pleases others. Do not try to provoke laughter; it is an easy path toward vulgar habits and can lessen your neighbors’ respect. Obscene conversation is dangerous too. When it occurs, rebuke the speaker if the opportunity is good. Otherwise, show your disapproval through silence, a blush, and the expression on your face.
34. Pause before Pleasure
When an impression of pleasure comes to you, guard against being carried away. Let the thing wait while you give yourself time. Think of two moments: the pleasure as you enjoy it, and the time afterward when you will regret it and reproach yourself. Set against these the joy and self-approval you will have if you abstain. If doing the thing still seems appropriate, make sure its charm, pleasure, and attraction do not overpower you. Put on the other side how much better it is to know you have won this contest.
35. Do What You Judge Right
Once you have decided an act is right and are doing it, do not hide from being seen, even if most people disapprove. If the act is wrong, do not do it. If it is right, why fear people whose criticism is mistaken?
36. The Host and the Larger Share
The proposition “It is either day or night” is important to a disjunctive argument but worthless to a conjunctive one. Similarly, at a banquet the larger portion has value for the body, but none for preserving social regard. When you eat with someone, consider both the bodily value of the food set before you and the value of proper conduct toward your host.
37. A Role beyond Your Strength
If you take on a role beyond your strength, you act unbecomingly in that role and neglect the one you could have fulfilled.
38. Protect the Ruling Faculty
As you walk, you watch for a nail or a place where you might sprain your foot. In the same way, take care not to injure your ruling faculty. Observe this in every action, and you will undertake each one more securely.
39. The Measure of Possessions
The body is each person’s measure of property, just as the foot is the measure of a shoe. Keep to the body’s needs and you will maintain the measure. Go beyond them, and you must be swept down a slope. Once a shoe exceeds what the foot needs, it becomes gilded, then purple, then embroidered. There is no limit after the true measure has been passed.
40. How Girls Learn Their Worth
From the age of fourteen, men address girls as “ladies.” Seeing no other power available to them than lying with men, they begin to adorn themselves and place all their hopes in this. We should therefore take care that they know they are valued for appearing decent, modest, and discreet, and for nothing else.
41. Keep the Body Subordinate
Spending much time on bodily concerns shows a small mind: excessive exercise, eating, drinking, relieving oneself, or sexual intercourse. Attend to these things as subordinate matters. Direct your care to the mind.
42. Why Another Person Acts
When someone treats or speaks of you badly, remember that he acts because he thinks it right. He cannot follow what seems right to you; he follows what seems right to him. If his opinion is wrong, he is the one harmed, since he is the one deceived. If someone takes a true conjunction to be false, the conjunction is not harmed; the person mistaken about it is. Begin from these judgments, and you will be gentle toward someone who reviles you. Say each time, “That is how it seemed to him.”
43. The Two Handles
Everything has two handles: one by which it can be carried and one by which it cannot. If your brother treats you unjustly, do not grasp the matter by the handle of his injustice; that handle cannot bear it. Grasp it instead by his being your brother, someone raised with you. Then you hold it by the handle that can bear it.
44. What a Comparison Proves
These arguments do not follow: “I am richer than you, therefore I am better than you,” or “I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better than you.” These conclusions do follow: “I am richer than you, therefore my possessions are greater,” and “I am more eloquent than you, therefore my speech is better.” But you are neither possessions nor speech.
45. Describe before You Judge
Does someone bathe quickly, or early? Do not say that he bathes badly. Say only that he bathes quickly, or early. Does someone drink much wine? Do not say that he acts badly; say that he drinks much. Until you have determined his opinion, how do you know whether he acts wrongly? In this way you will not grasp some impressions accurately while assenting to others that you have not grasped.
46. Show Philosophy in Action
Never call yourself a philosopher, and do not talk much about philosophical principles among people without instruction. Do what follows from those principles. At a banquet, do not explain how one ought to eat; eat as one ought. Socrates avoided display so thoroughly that when people asked him to recommend them to philosophers, he took them to others. He was content to be overlooked.
If philosophical discussion arises among the uninstructed, generally keep silent. You risk immediately disgorging what you have not digested. When someone says you know nothing and you are not upset, you can be sure your work has begun. Sheep do not vomit up grass to show the shepherd how much they have eaten. Having digested their pasture, they produce wool and milk. Likewise, do not display principles to the uninstructed. Display the actions that come from having digested them.
47. Practice without Display
If you meet your bodily needs cheaply, do not take pride in it. If you drink water, do not keep announcing, “I drink water.” Consider how much more frugal and capable of toil poor people are than we are. If you train yourself in toil and endurance, do it for yourself, not for an audience. Do not embrace statues. If you are very thirsty, take a mouthful of cold water, spit it out, and tell no one.
48. The Signs of Progress
An uninstructed person expects advantage and harm from external things, never from himself. A philosopher expects all advantage and harm from himself. A person making progress neither censures nor praises, blames, or accuses anyone. He says nothing of himself as though he were somebody or knew something. When obstructed, he blames himself. If someone praises him, he privately laughs at the praise; if someone criticizes him, he offers no defense.
He moves like someone recovering from weakness, careful not to disturb what has been set in place before it is firm. He has removed all desire and directs aversion only toward what is contrary to nature within his power. His movement toward things is moderate. He does not mind being thought foolish or ignorant. In a word, he watches himself as though he were an enemy lying in ambush.
49. Understanding and Doing
When someone prides himself on understanding and explaining Chrysippus, say to yourself, “If Chrysippus had not written obscurely, he would have nothing to be proud of.” What do I want? To understand nature and follow it. So I ask who can interpret it, and, hearing that Chrysippus can, I go to him. When I do not understand his writing, I seek an interpreter. None of this gives me reason for pride.
Once I have found the interpreter, what remains is to use the teachings. That alone is worthy of pride. If I admire only the explanation, what have I become but a grammarian instead of a philosopher? The only difference is that I explain Chrysippus rather than Homer. So when someone asks me to read Chrysippus to him, I blush if I cannot show actions resembling and agreeing with Chrysippus’s words.
50. Live by What You Have Learned
Whatever rules for the conduct of life are set before you, abide by them as though they were laws and you would be guilty of impiety by breaking them. Pay no attention to what anyone says about you. It is no concern of yours.
How much longer will you delay thinking yourself worthy of the best things and refusing to transgress reason’s distinctive guidance in any matter? You have received and agreed to the principles it was your duty to accept. What teacher are you still waiting for, to whom you would hand over the work of correcting yourself? You are no longer a youth but a grown man. If you remain negligent and idle, putting off one decision after another and setting one day after another to begin attending to yourself, you will fail to notice that you make no progress. You will remain uninstructed in life and die so.
At once, then, resolve to live as a grown man who is making progress. Let whatever seems best to you be a law you will not break. When you meet something laborious or pleasant, glorious or inglorious, remember that the contest is now. The Olympic Games are now and cannot be put off. Progress is lost or preserved by a single defeat, a single act of yielding. Socrates became perfect in this way, improving himself in everything and attending to reason alone. Though you are not yet Socrates, live as someone who wishes to become Socrates.
51. Practice before Proof
