Discourses - Book III   

"But my mother will not hold my head when I am sick." Go to your
mother then; for you are a fit person to have your head held when
you are sick. "But at home I used to lie down on a delicious bed."
Go away to your bed: indeed you are fit to lie on such a bed even when
you are in health: do not, then, lose what you can do there.
But what does Socrates say? "As one man," he says, "is pleased
with improving his land, another with improving his horse, so I am
daily pleased in observing that I am growing better." "Better in what?
in using nice little words?" Man, do not say that. "In little
matters of speculation?" What are you saying? "And indeed I do not see
what else there is on which philosophers employ their time." Does it
seem nothing to you to have never found fault with any person, neither
with God nor man? to have blamed nobody? to carry the same face always
in going out and coming in? This is what Socrates knew, and yet he
never said that he knew anything or taught anything. But if any man
asked for nice little words or little speculations, he would carry him
to Protagoras or to Hippias; and if any man came to ask for pot-herbs,
he would carry him to the gardener. Who then among you has this
purpose? for if indeed you had it, you would both be content in
sickness, and in hunger, and in death. If any among you has been in
love with a charming girl, he knows that I say what is true.

CHAPTER 6

Miscellaneous

When some person asked him how it happened that since reason has
been more cultivated by the men of the present age, the progress
made in former times was greater. In what respect, he answered, has it
been more cultivated now, and in what respect was the progress greater
then? For in that in which it has now been more cultivated, in that
also the progress will now be found. At present it has been cultivated
for the purpose of resolving syllogisms, and progress is made. But
in former times it was cultivated for the purpose of maintaining the
governing faculty in a condition conformable to nature, and progress
was made. Do not, then, mix things which are different and do not
expect, when you are laboring at one thing, to make progress in
another. But see if any man among us when he is intent see I upon
this, the keeping himself in a state conformable to nature and
living so always, does not make progress. For you will not find such a
man.
The good man is invincible, for he does not enter the contest
where he is not stronger. If you want to have his land and all that is
on it, take the land; take his slaves, take his magisterial office,
take his poor body. But you will not make his desire fail in that
which it seeks, nor his aversion fall into that which he would
avoid. The only contest into which he enters is that about things
which are within the power of his will; how then will he not be
invincible?
Some person having asked him what is Common sense, Epictetus