Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/470



Instead of an herd of oxen, endeavour to assemble herds of friends in your house.

As a wolf resembles a dog, so both a flatterer, and an adulterer and a parasite, resemble a friend. Take care then that instead of watch dogs you do not without knowing it let in mischievous wolves.

To be eager that your house should be admired by being whitened with gypsum, is the mark of a man who has no taste: but to set off (decorate) our morals by the goodness of our communication (social habits) is the mark of a man who is a lover of beauty and a lover of man.

If you begin by admiring little things, you will not be thought worthy of great things: but if you despise the little, you will be greatly admired.

Nothing is smaller (meaner) than love of pleasure, and love of gain and pride. Nothing is superior to magnanimity, and gentleness, and love of mankind, and beneficence.

They bring forward (they name, they mention) the peevish philosophers (the Stoics), whose opinion it is that pleasure is not a thing conformable to nature, but is a thing which is consequent on the things which are conformable to nature, as justice, temperance, freedom. What