The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Friday, September 3, 2021

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 145


Remember that not only the love of power and wealth sets us under the heel of others, but even the love of tranquillity, of leisure, of change of scene—of learning in general, it matters not what the outward thing may be—to set store by it is to place yourself in subjection to another.

Where is the difference then between desiring to be a Senator, and desiring not to be one: between thirsting for office and thirsting to be quit of it? 

Where is the difference between crying, "Woe is me, I know not what to do, bound hand and foot as I am to my books so that I cannot stir!" and crying, "Woe is me, I have not time to read!" As though a book were not as much an outward thing and independent of the will, as office and power and the receptions of the great.

Or what reason have you, tell me, for desiring to read? For if you aim at nothing beyond the mere delight of it, or gaining some scrap of knowledge, you are but a poor, spiritless knave. 

But if you desire to study to its proper end, what else is this than a life that flows on tranquil and serene? And if your reading secures you not serenity, what profits it?

"No, but it does secure it," says he, "and that is why I repine at being deprived of it."

And what serenity is this that lies at the mercy of every passer-by? I say not at the mercy of the Emperor or Emperor's favorite, but such as trembles at a raven's croak and piper's din, a fever's touch or a thousand things of like sort! 

Whereas the life serene has no more certain mark than this, that it ever moves with constant unimpeded flow.



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