9781945186240

There is no common benchmark for all the things that people think are
good—except for a few, the ones that affect us all. So the goal should be a
common one—a civic one. If you direct all your energies toward that, your
actions will be consistent. And so will you.
22. The town mouse and the country mouse. Distress and agitation of
the town mouse.
23. Socrates used to call popular beliefs “the monsters under the bed”—
only useful for frightening children with.
24. At festivals the Spartans put their guests’ seats in the shade, but sat
themselves down anywhere.
25. Socrates declining Perdiccas’s invitation “so as to avoid dying a
thousand deaths” (by accepting a favor he couldn’t pay back).
26. This advice from Epicurean writings: to think continually of one of
the men of old who lived a virtuous life.
27. The Pythagoreans tell us to look at the stars at daybreak. To remind
ourselves how they complete the tasks assigned them—always the same
tasks, the same way. And their order, purity, nakedness. Stars wear no
concealment.
28. Socrates dressed in a towel, the time Xanthippe took his cloak and
went out. The friends who were embarrassed and avoided him when they
saw him dressed like that, and what Socrates said to them.
29. Mastery of reading and writing requires a master. Still more so life.
30. “. . . For you/Are but a slave and have no claim to logos.”
31. “But my heart rejoiced.”
32. “And jeer at virtue with their taunts and sneers.”
33. Stupidity is expecting figs in winter, or children in old age.