If you want your family and friends to live forever, you’re a fool, because you’re trying to control what you can’t, and insisting that what’s up to others be within your will. Likewise, if you want your subordinate to perform perfectly, you’re a fool, because you’re deciding that his attitudes must be subject to yours. If you want to avoid disappointment, that you can do. Pay attention to what’s really up to you. Your master is whoever controls the things you want, or want to avoid. If you want to be free, don’t wish for anything, or try to avoid anything, that others control; otherwise you’re a slave.

If you make it your will that your children and your wife and your friends should live for ever, you are silly; for you are making it your will that things not under your control should be under your control, and that what is not your own should be your own. In the same way, too, if you make it your will that your slave-boy be free from faults, you are a fool; for you are making it your will that vice be not vice, but something else. If, however, it is your will not to fail in what you desire, this is in your power. Wherefore, exercise yourself in that which is in your power. Each man’s master is the person who has the authority over what the man wishes or does not wish, so as to secure it, or take it away. Whoever, therefore, wants to be free, let him neither wish for anything, nor avoid anything, that is under the control of others; or else he is necessarily a slave.

It is silly to want your children and your wife and your friends to live for ever, for that means that you want what is not in your control to be in your control, and what is not your own to be yours. In the same way if you want your servant to make no mistakes, you are a fool, for you want vice not to be vice but something different. But if you want not to be disappointed in your will to get, you can attain to that.

Exercise yourself then in what lies in your power. Each man’s master is the man who has authority over what he wishes or does not wish, to secure the one or to take away the other. Let him then who wishes to be free not wish for anything or avoid anything that depends on others; or else he is bound to be a slave.

If you would have your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are silly; for you would have the things which are not in your power to be in your power, and the things which belong to others to be yours. So if you would have your slave to be free from faults, you are a fool; for you would have badness not to be badness, but something else. But if you wish not to fail in your desires, you are able to do that. Practice, then, this which you are able to do. He is the master of every man who has the power over the things, which another person wishes or does not wish, the power to confer them on him or to take them away. Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid anything which depends on others: if he does not observe this rule, he must be a slave.

You are quite astray if you desire your wife and children and friends to live for ever, for then you are desiring things that are not of yourself to be of yourself, and to control that which is not in your power. So also if you desire that your servant never should display any shortcomings, you are a fool; for that is as much as to desire that imperfection should not be imperfection, but something else. But If you wish never to fall short of your desires, this indeed is possible to you; this therefore practice, namely, the practicable.

You own a master when another has power over the things that are pleasing or displeasing to you, to give them or to take them away. Whosoever then would be free, let him neither desire nor shun any of the things that depend not upon himself; otherwise he must needs be enslaved.

If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are foolish; for you wish things to be in your power which are not so; and what belongs to others to be your own. So likewise, if you wish your servant to be without fault, you are foolish; for you wish vice not to be vice, but something else. But if you wish not to be disappointed in your desires, that is in your own power. Exercise, therefore, what is in your power. A man’s master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.

If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish to be in control of things which you cannot, you wish for things that belong to others to be your own. So likewise, if you wish your servant to be without fault, you are a fool; for you wish vice not to be vice,” but something else. But, if you wish to have your desires undisappointed, this is in your own control. Exercise, therefore, what is in your control. He is the master of every other person who is able to confer or remove whatever that person wishes either to have or to avoid. Whoever, then, would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others else he must necessarily be a slave.

Ἐὰν θέλῃς τὰ τέκνα σου καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τοὺς φίλους σου πάντοτε ζῆν, ἠλίθιος εἶ: τὰ γὰρ μὴ ἐπὶ σοὶ θέλεις ἐπὶ σοὶ εἶναι καὶ τὰ ἀλλότρια σὰ εἶναι. οὕτω κἂν τὸν παῖδα θέλῃς μὴ ἁμαρτάνειν, μωρὸς εἶ: θέλεις γὰρ τὴν κακίαν μὴ εἶναι κακίαν, ἀλλ’ ἄλλο τι. ἐὰν δὲ θέλῃς ὀρεγόμενος μὴ ἀποτυγχάνειν, τοῦτο δύνασαι. τοῦτο οὖν ἄσκει, ὃ δύνασαι.

κύριος ἑκάστου ἐστὶν ὁ τῶν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου θελομένων ἢ μὴ θελομένων ἔχων τὴν ἐξουσίαν εἰς τὸ περιποιῆσαι ἢ ἀφελέσθαι. ὅστις οὖν ἐλεύθερος εἶναι βούλεται, μήτε θελέτω τι μήτε φευγέτω τι τῶν ἐπ’ ἄλλοις: εἰ δὲ μή, δουλεύειν ἀνάγκη.