Discourses 2.1 ¶4–5 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 2.1 ¶4–5

Well have I not read to you, and do you not know what I was doing? In what? In my little dissertations.—Show me how you are with respect to desire and aversion (ἔκκλισιν); and show me if you do not fail in getting what you wish, and if you do not fall into the things which you would avoid: but as to these long and labored sentences you will take them and blot them out. What then, did not Socrates write? And who wrote so much?—But how? As he could not always have at hand one to argue against his principles or to be argued against in turn, he used to argue with and examine himself, and he was always treating at least some one subject in a practical way. These are the things which a philosopher writes. But little dissertations and that method, which I speak of, he leaves to others, to the stupid, or to those happy men who being free from perturbations have leisure, or to such as are too foolish to reckon consequences.