Discourses (Books 1 and 2)

Do you see where your eyes are looking? You are looking at the earth, at what is lowest and basest,42 at these miserable laws of the dead, and you regard not the laws of the gods.

Are they not the words of all kings that are? For what else are tragedies but a portrayal in such metrical form of the sufferings of men who have set their admiration on outward things? If delusion after all were the only means for a man to learn this lesson30—the lesson that not one of the things beyond the compass of our will concerns us, then I for my part would choose a delusion such as this, if it should procure me a life of undisturbed tranquillity

If delusion after all were the only means for a man to learn this lesson30—the lesson that not one of the things beyond the compass of our will concerns us, then I for my part would choose a delusion such as this, if it should procure me a life of undisturbed tranquillity