Discourses - Book III   

to his doors?" If reason requires this to be done for the sake of
country, for the sake of kinsmen, for the sake of mankind, why
should you not go? You are not ashamed to go to the doors of a
shoemaker, when you are in want of shoes, nor to the door of a
gardener, when you want lettuces; and are you ashamed to go to the
doors of the rich when you want anything? "Yes, for I have no awe of a
shoemaker." Don't feel any awe of the rich. "Nor will I flatter the
gardener." And do not flatter the rich. "How, then, shall I get what I
want?" Do I say to you, "Go as if you were certain to get what you
want"? And do not I only tell you that you may do what is becoming
to yourself? "Why, then, should I still go?" That you may have gone,
that you may have discharged the duty of a citizen, of a brother, of a
friend. And further remember that you have gone to the shoemaker, to
the seller of vegetables, who have no power in anything great or
noble, though he may sell dear. You go to buy lettuces: they cost an
obolus, but not a talent. So it is here also. The matter is worth
going for to the rich man's door. Well, I will go. It is worth talking
about. Let it be so; I will talk with him. But you must also kiss
his hand and flatter him with praise. Away with that, it is a talent's
worth: it is not profitable to me, nor to the state nor to my friends,
to have done that which spoils a good citizen and a friend. "But you
seem not to have been eager about the matter, if you do not
succeed." Have you again forgotten why you went? Know you not that a
good man does nothing for the sake of appearance, but for the sake
of doing right? "What advantage is it, then, to him to have done
right?" And what advantage is it to a man who writes the name of
Dion to write it as he ought? The advantage is to have written it. "Is
there no reward then?" Do you seek a reward for a good man greater
than doing what is good and just? At Olympia you wish for nothing
more, but it seems to you enough to be crowned at the games. Does it
seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good and happy? For
these purposes being introduced by the gods into this city, and it
being now your duty to undertake the work of a man, do you still
want nurses also and a mamma, and do foolish women by their weeping
move you and make you effeminate? Will you thus never cease to be a
foolish child? know you not that he who does the acts of a child,
the older he is, the more ridiculous he is?
In Athens did you see no one by going to his house? "I visited any
man that I pleased." Here also be ready to see, and you will see
whom you please: only let it be without meanness, neither with
desire nor with aversion, and your affairs will be well managed. But
this result does not depend on going nor on standing at the doors, but
it depends on what is within, on your opinions. When you have
learned not to value things which are external, and not dependent on
the will, and to consider that not one of them is your own, but that
these things only are your own, to exercise the judgment well, to form
opinions, to move toward an object, to desire, to turn from a thing,
where is there any longer room for flattery, where for meanness? why
do you still long for the quiet there, and for the places to which you
are accustomed? Wait a little and you will again find these places