Because anger, too, is weakness, as much as breaking
down and giving up the struggle. Both are deserters: the man
who breaks and runs, and the one who lets himself be
alienated from his fellow humans.
- The natural can never be inferior to the artificial; art
imitates nature, not the reverse. In which case, that most
highly developed and comprehensive nature—Nature itself—
cannot fall short of artifice in its craftsmanship.
Now, all the arts move from lower goals to higher ones.
Won’t Nature do the same?
Hence justice. Which is the source of all the other virtues.
For how could we do what justice requires if we are
distracted by things that don’t matter, if we are naive,
gullible, inconstant?
- It’s the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid
them, that leave you in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t
seeking you out; you are the one seeking them.
Suspend judgment about them. And at once they will lie
still, and you will be freed from fleeing and pursuing.
- The soul as a sphere in equilibrium: Not grasping at
things beyond it or retreating inward. Not fragmenting
outward, not sinking back on itself, but ablaze with light and