1You want these letters too, like the earlier ones, to have some sayings of our leading men appended. 1They were not busy with little flowers of speech; 1their whole texture is manly. 1You may be sure there is unevenness where the things that stand out are conspicuous. 1One tree does not excite wonder when the whole forest has risen to the same height. 2Poems are full of sayings of this kind, and so are histories. 2So I do not want you to think they belong to Epicurus; 2they are public property, and above all ours. 2But in him they are noticed more, because they occur only now and then, because they are unexpected, because it is surprising for something brave to be said by a man who professes softness.
2For that is how most people judge. 2In my view Epicurus is brave too, though he wears long sleeves. 2Courage and energy and a mind ready for war are found as much among Persians as among men girded high. 3There is no reason, then, for you to demand extracts and repetitions; 3what is excerpted from other writers runs continuously in ours. 3So we do not have those eye-catching displays, nor do we deceive the buyer, who will find nothing when he has gone inside except what is hung up in the shop-front. 3We let buyers themselves take their samples from wherever they like. 4Suppose we wanted to separate individual maxims from the crowd; 4to whom shall we assign them?
4To Zeno, or Cleanthes, or Chrysippus, or Panaetius, or Posidonius? 4We are not under a king; 4each man claims his own freedom. 4Among those people, whatever Hermarchus said, whatever Metrodorus said, is credited to one man. 4Everything that anyone in that fellowship said was said under the leadership and auspices of one man. 4We cannot, I say, though we may try, pick out anything from so great a multitude of things of equal worth. 4'It is a poor man's part to count his flock.' 4Wherever you cast your eye, you will meet with something that could stand out, were it not read among its equals. 5So lay aside that hope that you can sample the minds of the greatest men in summary; 5you must examine them whole, handle them whole.
5A real subject is being worked out, and the work of genius is knit together through its own features, so that nothing can be removed from it without collapse. 5Nor do I object to your considering the individual limbs, provided it is on the man himself. 5She is not beautiful whose leg or arm is praised, but she whose whole appearance has taken away admiration from the separate parts. 6If you insist, however, I shall not deal with you in so beggarly a fashion, but it shall be done with a full hand; 6there is a huge crowd of them lying everywhere, to be taken up, not gleaned. 6For they do not drop out here and there, but flow.
6They are unbroken and woven into one another. 6Nor do I doubt that they contribute much to those still untrained and listening from outside; 6for individual sayings settle in more easily when they are marked off and enclosed like a verse. 7That is why we give boys maxims to learn by heart, and those which the Greeks call chriae, because a boy's mind, which as yet holds nothing more, can grasp them. 7For a man of assured progress it is shameful to chase after little flowers and prop himself up with a very few of the best-known sayings and rely on memory; 7let him now lean on himself. 7Let him speak such things, not memorise them.
7For it is shameful for an old man, or one in sight of old age, to have a wisdom drawn from a notebook. 7'Zeno said this'; 7and you, what do you say? 7'Cleanthes said this'; 7and you, what? 7How long will you move under another's command? 7Take command, and say something to be handed down to memory. 7Bring forth something of your own as well. 8All those people, then, never authors, always interpreters, lurking in another's shadow, I think have nothing noble in them, since they never once dared to do what they had long been learning. 8They have exercised their memory on other men's material. 8But it is one thing to remember, another to know.
8To remember is to keep safe something entrusted to the memory. 8To know, on the contrary, is to make each thing your own, and not to hang upon a model and keep looking back to the master. 9'Zeno said this, Cleanthes this.' 9Let there be some difference between you and a book. 9How long will you be learning? 9Now teach as well. 9'Why should I listen as well to what I can read?' 9'The living voice,' he says, 'does a great deal.' 9Not, certainly, this one, which is lent to another's words and does the office of a clerk. 10Consider too that those who never become their own guardians follow their predecessors, first, in a matter in which everyone has departed from his predecessor; 10and second, they follow them in a matter which is still under inquiry.
10But it will never be found if we are content with what has been found. 10Besides, whoever follows another finds nothing, indeed does not even look. 11What then? 11Shall I not walk in the footsteps of those before me? 11I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one shorter and smoother, I shall build it. 11Those who have dealt with these matters before us are not our masters but our guides. 11Truth lies open to all; it has not yet been taken over. 11Much of it has been left even for those to come. 11Farewell.