if you once gain time and delay, you will more
easily master yourself.

XXI.

Let death and exile and every other thing which appears dreadful be
daily before your eyes; but most of all death: and you will never think
of anything mean nor will you desire anything extravagantly.

XXII.

If you desire philosophy, prepare yourself from the beginning to be
ridiculed, to expect that many will sneer at you, and say, He has all at
once returned to us as a philosopher; and whence does he get this
supercilious look for us? Do you not show a supercilious look; but hold
on to the things which seem to you best as one appointed by God to this
station. And remember that if you abide in the same principles, these
men who first ridiculed will afterwards admire you; but if you shall
have been overpowered by them, you will bring on yourself double
ridicule.

XXIII.

If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to
please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in
life. Be satisfied then in everything with being a philosopher; and if
you wish to seem also to any person to be a philosopher, appear so to
yourself, and you will be able to do this.

XXIV.

Let not these thoughts afflict you, I shall live unhonored and be nobody
nowhere. For if want of honor ([Greek: atimia]) is an evil, you cannot
be in evil through the means (fault) of another any more than you can be
involved in anything base. Is it then your business to obtain the rank
of a magistrate, or to be received at a banquet? By no means. How then
can this be want of honor (dishonor)? And how will you be nobody
nowhere, when you ought to be somebody in those things only which are in
your power, in which indeed it is permitted to you to be a man of the
greatest worth? But your friends will be without assistance! What do you
mean by being without assistance? They will not receive money from you,
nor will you make them Roman citizens. Who then told you that these are
among the things which are in our power, and not in the power of others?
And who can give to another what he has not himself? Acquire money then,
your friends say, that we also may have something. If I can acquire
money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point
out the way, and I will acquire it. But if you ask me to lose the things
which are good and my own, in order that you may gain the things which
are not good, see how unfair and silly you are.