Book A
2
A soul which is conversant with virtue is like an ever flowing source, for it is pure and tranquil and potable and sweetConsult the Lexicons for this sense of νόστιμος. and communicative (social), and rich and harmless and free from mischief.
3
If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.
4
It is better to do wrong seldom and to own it, and to act right for the most part, than seldom to admit that you have done wrong and to do wrong often.
5
Check (punish) your passions (πάφη), that you may not be punished by them.
6
Do not so much be ashamed of that (disgrace) which proceeds from men’s opinion as fly from that which comes from the truth.
7
If you wish to be well spoken of, learn to speak well (of others): and when you have learned to speak well of them, try to act well, and so you will reap the fruit of being well spoken of.
8
Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice: and both are acts of the will. But where there is no will, neither of them touches (affects) these things. But the soul is accustomed to be master of the body, and the things which belong to the body have no share in the will. For no man is a slave who is free in his will.See Schweig.’s note.
9
It is an evil chain, fortune (a chain) of the body, and vice of the soul. For he who is loose (free) in the body, but bound in the soul is a slave: but on the contrary he who is bound in the body, but free (unbound) in the soul, is free.
