Epictetus

“ Don't these very same persons secretly despise you? 15When, therefore, a person who is conscious of never having either thought or done a good thing finds a philosopher who tells him, "You are a genius, straightforward and unspoiled," what else do you suppose the man says to himself but, "This man wants to use me for something or other"? Or else tell me; what work of genius has he displayed? Look, he has been with you all this time, he has listened to your discourse, he has heard you lecture. ”

“ Not to act as a sheep, gently but without fixed purpose; nor destructively, like a wild beast. 5The individual standard applies to each man's occupation and moral purpose. The citharoede is to act as a citharoede, [1] the carpenter as a carpenter, the philosopher as a philosopher, the rhetor as a rhetor. When, therefore, you say, "Come and listen to me as I read you a lecture," see to it first that you are not acting without fixed purpose. And then, if you find that you are using a standard of judgement, see if it is the right one. Do you wish to do good or to be praised? ”

“ You will find the same thing in the arts. If you want to be a carpenter, you will have such and such exercises; if a blacksmith, such and such other. For in everything that we do, if we do not refer it to some standard, we shall be acting at random; but if we refer it to the wrong standard, we shall make an utter failure. Furthermore, there are two standards to go by, the one general, the other individual. First of all, I must act as a man. ”

“ I invite you to come and hear that you are in a bad way, and that you are concerned with anything rather than what you should be concerned with, and that you are ignorant of the good and the evil, and are wretched and miserable. ”

“ And for that reason who ever heard Socrates saying, "I know something and teach it"? But he used to send one person here and another there. [7] Therefore men used to go to him to have him introduce them to philosophers, [8] and he used to take them around and introduce them. But no, your idea of him, no doubt, is that, as he was taking them along, he used to say, "Come around to-day and hear me deliver a discourse in the house of Quadratus"! [9]
Why should I listen to you? Do you want to exhibit to me the clever way in which you put words together? You do compose them cleverly, man ”

“ By the gods, I beseech you, have done with discrediting, as far as it is in your power to discredit, words and actions that are noble! There is nothing more effective in the style for exhortation than when the speaker makes clear to his audience that he has need of them. [16] Or tell me, who that ever heard you reading a lecture or conducting a discourse felt greatly disturbed about himself, or came to a realization of the state he was in, or on going out said, "The philosopher brought it home to me in fine style ”

“ And yet if the philosopher's discourse does not produce this effect, it is lifeless and so is the speaker himself Rufus used to say, "If you have nothing better to do than to praise me, then I am speaking to no purpose." [13] Wherefore he spoke in such a way that each of us as we sat there fancied someone had gone to Rufus and told him of our faults; so effective was his grasp of what men actually do, so vividly did he set before each man's eyes his particular weaknesses.
30Men, the lecture-room of the philosopher is a hospital ”

“ The ability to show to the individual, as well as to the crowd, the warring inconsistency in which they are floundering about, and how they are paying attention to anything rather than what they truly want. For they want the things that conduce to happiness, but they are looking for them in the wrong place. 35To achieve that must a thousand benches be placed, and the prospective audience be invited, and you put on a fancy cloak, or dainty mantle, and mount the speaker's stand, and paint a word-picture of—how Achilles died? ”

“ Tell yourself, first of all, what kind of man you want to be; and then go ahead with what you are doing. For in practically every other pursuit we see this done. The athletes first decide what kind of athletes they want to be, and then they act accordingly. If a man wants to be a distance-runner, he adopts a suitable diet, walking, rubbing, and exercise ”

“ Chrysippus, frags. 579, 652, 658-663, all in Von Arnim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. ↑ The three slightly varying translations for παρακαλεῖν, "invite," "advertize," and "call in," seem to be required by our idiom. ”