To Rusticus I owe that I first realized my life needed fixing and healing. He kept me from the pride of common teachers who write papers about theory or give public speeches to inspire people toward virtue and philosophy. He saved me from showing off my physical abilities or trying to impress people with how active I was. Because of him I gave up studying rhetoric and poetry and fancy language. I stopped walking around the house in my long robes and doing things like that.
To Rusticus I am beholding, that I first entered into the conceit that my life wanted some redress and cure. And then, that I did not fall into the ambition of ordinary sophists, either to write tracts concerning the common theorems, or to exhort men unto virtue and the study of philosophy by public orations; as also that I never by way of ostentation did affect to show myself an active able man, for any kind of bodily exercises. And that I gave over the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of elegant neat language. That I did not use to walk about the house in my long robe, nor to do any such things.