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Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 14
Identifier
013346
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Enchiridion
14. If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends
to live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish to be in
control of things which you cannot, you wish for things that
belong to others to be your own. So likewise, if you wish your
servant to be without fault, you are a fool; for you wish vice
not to be vice," but something else. But, if you wish to have
your desires undisappointed, this is in your own control.
Exercise, therefore, what is in your control. He is the master
of every other person who is able to confer or remove whatever
that person wishes either to have or to avoid. Whoever, then,
would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing,
which depends on others else he must necessarily be a slave.