The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [13]
13. Try, therefore, in the first place, not to be hurried away with the appearance. For if you once gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself.
14. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’
Chapter 13
1. Let death, illness, failure and loss, and any other thing which appears terrible, be frankly gazed upon, to be seen for what it is;
2. And chiefly death, which is no more than dreamless sleep, and rest from strife;
3. And you will cease to entertain abject thoughts; nor will you too eagerly covet anything, since all must be left behind one day.
4. If you have an earnest desire of attaining wisdom, prepare yourself from the first to be laughed at by the multitude,
5. To hear them say, ‘He does not covet what we covet, or seek what we hasten after and pursue, but he stands apart.’
6. Do not mind such rejection, but keep steadily to those things which appear best to you.
7. For if you adhere to your principles, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you.
8. But if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule.
9. If you turn your attention to externals, so as to wish to please anyone, be assured that you will hinder your scheme of life.
10. Be contented, then, in everything devoted to living wisely, and it will suffice you.
11. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’
Chapter 14
1. Do not allow such a consideration as this to distress you: ‘I will be nobody anywhere.’ Is it the meaning of life to get power, or to be admitted to the first rank?
2. And how is it true that you will be nobody anywhere, when you will be somebody in those things which lie under your own control, where you yourself matter most?
3. ‘But my friends will be unassisted.’ What do you mean by unassisted? Who told you that these are among the things in your own control, and not the affair of others? Who can give to another things that he himself does not have?
4. ‘Well, but if I get them, then my friends too may have a share.’ If I can get them with the preservation of my own honour and fidelity of mind, show me the way and I will get them, and willingly share them;
5. But if you require me to lose the proper good so that another may gain what is not good, let me decline.
6. Besides, which would you rather have, a sum of money, or a faithful friend? Rather assist me, then, to gain this character than require me to do those things by which I may lose it.
7. ‘Well, but my country, as far as it depends on me, will be unassisted.’ Here again, what assistance do you mean?
8. If I may serve my country with honour and fidelity of mind, let me serve it to the uttermost;
9. And most by supplying it with another citizen of honour and fidelity, which is of greater use to it.
10. ‘What place, then, say you, will I hold in the state?’ Whatever you can hold with the preservation of your fidelity and honour.
11. But if, by desiring to be useful to that, you lose these, of what use can you be to your country should you become faithless and void of shame?
12. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’
Chapter 15
1. Is anyone raised above you at a meeting, or given a greater compliment, or admitted to the counsels of the rulers where you are not invited?
2. If such things are good, you ought to be glad that the other has them; and if they are evil, do not be grieved that you do not have them.
3. Remember that you cannot, without using the same means as others do, acquire things not in your own control, or expect to be thought worthy of an equal share of them.
4. For how can he who does not frequent the door of some influential person, and serve him with flattery, have an equal share with him who does?
5. You are unjust, then, and insatiable, if you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold, and wish to get them for nothing.