"Because you think yourself but one among the many threads
which make up the texture of the doublet. You should aim at being
like men in general--just as your thread has no ambition either
to be anything distinguished compared with the other threads. But
I desire to be the purple--that small and shining part which
makes the rest seem fair and beautiful. Why then do you bid me
become even as the multitude? Then were I no longer the purple."
IX

If a man could be throughly penetrated, as he ought, with
this thought, that we are all in an especial manner sprung from
God, and that God is the Father of men as well as of Gods, full
surely he would never conceive aught ignoble or base of himself.
Whereas if Caesar were to adopt you, your haughty looks would be
intolerable; will you not be elated at knowing that you are the
son of God? Now however it is not so with us: but seeing that in
our birth these two things are commingled--the body which we
share with the animals, and the Reason and Thought which we share
with the Gods, many decline towards this unhappy kinship with the
dead, few rise to the blessed kinship with the Divine. Since then
every one must deal with each thing according to the view which
he forms about it, those few who hold that they are born for
fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the
things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of
themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?--A
wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine.
Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry
flesh of yours. Why then cling to the one, and neglect the other?

X

Thou art but a poor soul laden with a lifeless body.

XI

The other day I had an iron lamp placed beside my household
gods. I heard a noise at the door and on hastening down found my
lamp carried off. I reflected that the culprit was in no very
strange case. "Tomorrow, my friend," I said, "you will find an
earthenware lamp; for a man can only lose what he has."

XII

The reason why I lost my lamp was that the thief was
superior to me in vigilance. He paid however this price for the
lamp, that in exchange for it he consented to become a thief: in
exchange for it, to become faithless.

XIII