Enchiridion & The Discourses of Epictetus: Including the Fragments

by Epictetus

Therefore, until these fine ideas of yours are firmly fixed within you, and you have acquired some power which will guarantee you security, my advice to you is to be cautious about joining issue with the laymen; otherwise whatever you write down in the lecture-room will melt away by day like wax in the sun.1 10Retire, then, to some spot or other far away from the sun, so long as the ideas which you have are waxen. It is for this reason that the philosophers advise us to leave even our own countries, because old habits distract us and do not allow a beginning to be made of another custom, and we cannot bear to have men meet us and say, "Look, So-and-so is philosophizing, although he is this sort of a person or that." Thus also physicians send away to a different region and a different climate those who are suffering from chronic disorders, and that is well. Do you also introduce different habits; fix your ideas, exercise yourselves in them. But no, you go from the class-room to a show, a gladiatorial combat, a gymnasium-colonnade,2 a circus; and then you come back here from these places, and you go back there again from here, and remain the same persons all the time.3 15And so you acquire no fine habit; you pay no regard or attention to your own self; you do not observe: "How do I deal with the external impressions which befall me? In accordance with nature, or contrary to it? How shall I respond to these impressions? As I should, or as I should not? Do I declare to the thi...