Epictetus

“ Sometimes they play athletes, again gladiators, again they blow trumpets, and then act a play about anything that they have seen and admired. So you too are now an athlete, now a gladiator, then a philosopher, after that a rhetorician, yet with your whole soul nothing, but like an ape you imitate whatever you see, and one thing after another is always striking your fancy, but what you are accustomed to bores you. For you have never gone out after anything with circumspection, nor after you have examined the whole matter all over and tested it, but you act at haphazard and half-heartedly. ”

“ You must keep vigils, work hard, overcome certain desires, abandon your own people, be despised by a paltry slave, be laughed to scorn by those who meet you, in everything get the worst of it, in office, in honour, in court. ”

“ In the same way, when some people have seen a philosopher and heard someone speaking like Euphrates [6] (though, indeed, who can speak like him?) , they wish to be philosophers themselves. Man, consider first what the business is, and then your own natural ability, what you can bear. If you wish to be a wrestler, look to your shoulders, your thighs, your loins. 10For one man has a natural talent for one thing, another for another. Do you suppose that you can do the things you do now, and yet be a philosopher? ”