Section 9 (part 1)

p. 45 PYTHAGOREAN ETHICAL SENTENCES FROM STOBÆUS 1. Do not even think of doing what ought not to be done. 2. Choose rather to be strong in soul than in body. 3. Be persuaded that things of a laborious nature contribute more than pleasures to virtue. 4. Every passion of the soul is most hostile to its salvation. 5. It is difficult to walk at one and the same time many paths of life. p. 46 6. Pythagoras said, it is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner, the body, dominion, and honour. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors. Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake. This is the Law of God, that virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that every thing else is a trifle. 7. All the parts of human life, in the same manner as those of a statue, ought to be beautiful. 8. Frankincense ought to be given to the Gods, but praise to good men. 9. It is requisite to defend those who are unjustly accused of having acted injuriously, but to praise those who excel in a certain good. 10. Neither will the horse be adjudged to be generous, that is sumptuously adorned, but the horse whose nature is illustrious; nor is the man worthy who possesses great wealth, but he whose soul is generous. 11. When the wise man opens his mouth, the beauties of his soul present themselves p. 47 to the view, like the statues in a temple 12. Remind yourself that all men assert that wisdom is the greatest good, but that there are few who strenuously endeavour to obtain this greatest good. 13. Be sober, and remember to be disposed to believe; for these are the nerves of wisdom. 14. It is better to live lying on the grass, confiding in Divinity and yourself, than to lie on a golden bed with perturbation. 15. You will not be in want of anything, which it is in the power of fortune to give and take away. 1 16. Despise all those things which when liberated from the body you will not want; invoke the Gods to become your helpers. 17. Neither is it possible to conceal fire in a garment, nor a base deviation from rectitude in time. 18. Wind indeed increases fire, but custom love. 19. Those alone are dear to Divinity who are hostile to injustice. p. 48 20. Those things which the body necessarily requires, are easily to be procured by all men, without labour and molestation; but those things to the attainment of which labour and molestation are requisite, are objects of desire, not to the body, but to depraved opinion. 21. Of desire also, he (Pythagoras) said as follows:--This passion is various, laborious, and very multiform. Of desires, however, some are acquired and adventitious, but others are connascent. But he defined desire itself to be a certain tendency and impulse of the soul, and an appetite of a plentitude or presence of sense, or an emptiness and absence of it, and of non-perception. He also said, that there are three most known species of erroneous and depraved desire, viz., the indecorous, the incommensurate, and the unseasonable. For desire is either immediately Indecorous, troublesome, and illiberal, or it is not absolutely so, but is more vehement and lasting than is fit.