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Train yourself in self-imposed toils, that you may be able to endure those which others impose upon you.1 Practice self-control in all the things by which it is shameful for the soul to be controlled,2 namely, gain, temper, pleasure, and pain. You will attain such self-control if you regard as gainful those things which will increase your reputation and not those which will increase your wealth; if you manage your temper towards those who offend against you as you would expect others to do if you offended against them; if you govern your pleasures on the principle that it is shameful to rule over one's servants and yet be a slave to one's desires; and if, when you are in trouble, you contemplate the misfortunes of others and remind yourself that you are human.
1 So also Democritus, Stobaeus, Flor. xxix. 63.
2 The Greek ideal of freedom through self-control, See Socrates in Xen. Mem. 4.5. Cf. Isoc. 3.29.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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