Kitap 1
18
Practise yourself, for Heaven’s sake, in little things, and thence proceed to greater. I have a pain in my head. Do not lament. I have a pain in my ear. Do not lament. I do not say you may never groan, but do not groan in spirit; or if your servant be a long while in bringing you something to bind your head, do not croak and go into hysterics, and say, ( Everybody hates me. For who would not hate such a one?
18
Relying for the future on these principles, walk erect and free, not trusting to bulk of body, like a wrestler; for one should not be unconquerable in the sense that an ass is.
18
Who, then, is unconquerable? He whom the inevitable cannot overcome. For such a person I imagine every trial, and watch him as an athlete in each. He has been victorious in the first encounter. What will he do in the second? What, if he should be exhausted by the heat? What, if the field be Olympia? And so in other trials. If you throw money in his way, he will despise it. Is he proof against the seductions of women? What if he be tested by fame. by calumny, by praise, by death? He is able to overcome them all. If he can bear sunshine and storm, discouragement and fatigue, I pronounce him an athlete unconquered indeed.
Of the right treatment of tyrants.
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When a person is possessed of some personal advantage, either real or imaginary, he will necessarily be puffed up with it, unless he has been well instructed. A tyrant openly says, am supreme over all. And what can you bestow on me? Can you exempt my desires from disappointment? How should you? For do you never incur what you shun? Are your own aims infallible? Whence came you by that privilege? Pray, on shipboard, do you trust to yourself, or to the pilot In a chariot, to whom but the driver? And to whom in all other arts? Just the same. In what, then, does your power consist?
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All men pay regard to me.
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So do I to my desk. I wash it and wipe it, and drive a nail for my oil-flask.
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What, then; are these things to be valued beyond me?
