The Stoic Sage

March 23, 2025

Observe yourselves thus in your actions and you will find out to what sect of the philosophers you belong. You will find that most of you are Epicureans, some few Peripatetics, but these without any backbone; for wherein do you in fact show that you consider virtue equal to all things else, or even superior?
But as for a Stoic, show me one if you can! Where, or how? You can show me thousands who recite the petty arguments of the Stoics. Yes, but do these same men recite the petty arguments of the Epicureans any less well? Do they not handle with the same precision the petty arguments of the Peripatetics also? Who, then, is a Stoic?
Show me a man who though sick is happy, though in danger is happy, though dying is happy, though condemned to exile is happy, though in disrepute is happy. Show him! By the gods, I would fain see a Stoic!
But you cannot show me a man completely so fashioned; then show me at least one who is becoming so fashioned, one who has begun to tend in that direction; do me this favour; do not begrudge an old man the sight of that spectacle which to this very day I have never seen.
Show him to me! But you cannot. Why, then, do you mock your own selves and cheat everybody else?

And you come to learn and study these Things. Why then do not you finish your Work, if you have the proper Intention; and besides the Intention, the proper Qualifications? What do we yet lack?
Cannot the matter be taught? It can. Is it, then, not under our control? It is the only thing in the whole world that is under our control.
Wealth is not under our control, nor health, nor fame, nor, in a word, anything else except the right use of external impressions.
Why, then, do you not finish the work? Tell me the reason. For it lies either in me, or in you, or in the nature of the thing. The thing itself is possible and is the only thing that is under our control. Consequently, then, the fault lies either in me, or in you, or, what is nearer the truth, in us both. What then? Well then, shall we now, at last, bring this Intention along with us? Let us let bygones be bygones. Only let us begin, and, take my word for it, you shall see.

~ Epictetus, Book II Chapter 19