To Those Who Wish To Be Admired

1. When a person has his proper station in life, he does not gape after things
beyond it.
2. What is it that you wish to have, man? I for my part am content if my desires
and aversions are in accordance with nature, and if I exercise my impulse to act
and not to act as I was born to do, and likewise my purpose, design and assent.
Why, then, do you walk around as if you had swallowed a spit?
3. 'What I want is that all who meet me should admire me, and as they follow after
me cry out, What a great philosopher!'
4. Who are these people, by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not the very
people whom you have been in the habit of describing as mad? What, then, do you
want to be admired by madmen?