The Enchiridion

Hold it in one hand and you have already grasped its first claim. The book is small, a manual a soldier could carry to war, and everything it asks turns on a single line drawn through a life. Some things are up to you; most are not. Your judgments, your desires, the use you make of whatever happens, these are yours. Your body, your reputation, the people you love, tomorrow morning, these never were. Epictetus learned the distinction the hard way, born a slave in Nero's Rome and lame for life, made to find the one thing no owner can reach. The sayings his student Arrian set down do not soothe; they reorganize a person from the inside, schooling desire away from what can be seized and toward what cannot. Come to it wanting consolation and it hands you something harder and far better instead: the small, unbreakable part of a life that was always only yours to keep.