Discourses, That We Ought with Caution to Enter into Familiar Intercourse with Men

Epictetus — The Slave

Doctors send patients with long-term illnesses to different countries with different climates. They're right to do this. You should do the same thing — develop different habits than the ones you have now. Set your beliefs and practice them. But you don't do this. You leave here and go to shows, gladiator fights, the gym, or the races. Then you come back here. Then you go back to those places again. You're still the same person. You don't develop any good habits. You don't pay attention or take care of yourself. You don't ask yourself the important questions: How should I handle what happens to me? Should I respond naturally or unnaturally? Am I responding the right way or the wrong way? Do I tell myself that things outside my control don't concern me? If you're not doing this yet, run from your old habits. Stay away from ordinary people — if you ever want to become something worthwhile.

Epictetus — The Slave Original

Thus also physicians send those who have lingering diseases to a different country and a different air; and they do right. Do you also introduce other habits than those which you have; fix you opinions and exercise yourselves in them. But you do not so; you go hence to a spectacle, to a show of gladiators, to a place of exercise ([Greek: chuston]), to a circus; then you come back hither, and again from this place you go to those places, and still the same persons. And there is no pleasing (good) habit, nor attention, nor care about self and observation of this kind. How shall I use the appearances presented to me? according to nature, or contrary to nature? how do I answer to them? as I ought, or as I ought not? Do I say to those things which are independent of the will, that they do not concern me? For if you are not yet in this state, fly from your former habits, fly from the common sort, if you intend ever to begin to be something.