1. Therefore leave off saying: “Will the wise man, then, receive no injury if he is given a lashing, if he has an eye gouged out? Will he receive no insult if he is hooted through the forum by the vile words of a foul-mouthed crowd? If at a king’s banquet he is ordered to take a place beneath the table and to eat with the slaves assigned to the most disreputable service? If he is forced to bear whatever else can be thought of that will offend his native self-respect?” 2. No matter how great these things may come to be, whether in number or in size, their nature will remain the same. If small things do not move him, neither will the greater ones; if a few do not move him, neither will more. But from the measure of your own weakness you form your idea of an heroic spirit, and, having pictured how much you think that you can endure, you set the limit of the wise man’s endurance a little farther on. But his virtue has placed him in another region of the cosmos; he has nothing in common with you. 3. Therefore search out the hard things and whatever is grievous to bear — things from which the ear and the eye must shrink. The whole mass of them will not crush him and as he withstands them singly, so will he withstand them united. He who says that one thing is tolerable for the wise man, another intolerable, and restricts the greatness of his soul to definite bounds, does him wrong; Fortune conquers us, unless we wholly conquer her.
4. Do not suppose that such austerity is Stoic only. Epicurus, whom you claim as the advocate of your policy of inaction,13 who, as you think, enjoins the course that is soft and indolent and conducive to pleasure, has said, “Rarely does Fortune block the path of the wise man.”14 How near he came to uttering a manly sentiment! Will you speak more heroically and clear Fortune from his path altogether? This house of the wise man is cramped, without adornment, without bustle, without pomp, is guarded by no doormen who, with venal fastidiousness, discriminate between the visitors; but over its threshold, empty and devoid of keepers, Fortune does not pass. She knows that she has no place there, where nothing is her own.