Don't you see how many things you could have done and shown, despite any excuse about natural weakness or inability? Yet you still choose to stay down and discouraged. Will you really say that your natural makeup forces you to complain, to be petty and miserable, to flatter others, to accuse people one moment and try to please them the next, to pamper your body, to be vain, to be scattered and restless in your thoughts? No - the gods are my witnesses - you could have been free of all these things long ago. You would only have had to accept being called somewhat slow and dull. You should work on this weakness without being too hard on yourself about it, but also without taking pride in it.
Doest not thou perceive, how many things there be, which notwithstanding any pretence of natural indisposition and unfitness, thou mightest have performed and exhibited, and yet still thou doest voluntarily continue drooping downwards? Or wilt thou say that it is through defect of thy natural constitution, that thou art constrained to murmur, to be base and wretched to flatter; now to accuse, and now to please, and pacify thy body: to be vainglorious, to be so giddy-headed., and unsettled in thy thoughts? nay (witnesses be the Gods) of all these thou mightest have been rid long ago: only, this thou must have been contented with, to have borne the blame of one that is somewhat slow and dull, wherein thou must so exercise thyself, as one who neither doth much take to heart this his natural defect, nor yet pleaseth himself in it.