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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: either God or Man? to wear ever the same countenance in going
forth as in coming in? This was the secret of Socrates: yet he
never said that he knew or taught anything. . . . Who amongst you
makes this his aim? Were it indeed so, you would gladly endure
sickness, hunger, aye, death itself.
LXXXVI
How are we constituted by Nature? To be free, to be noble,
to be modest (for what other living thing is capable of blushing,
or of feeling the impression of shame?) and to subordinate
pleasure to the ends for which Nature designed us, as a handmaid
and a minister, in order to call forth our activity; in order to
 The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |