1The notes you ask for, carefully arranged and compressed into a small space, I shall certainly compose. 1But consider whether the regular method may not be of more use than this which is now commonly called a 'breviary', and was once, when people spoke Latin, called a 'summary'. 1The former is more necessary for one who is learning, the latter for one who knows. 1For the one teaches, the other reminds. 1But I shall furnish you with a supply of both. 1There is no reason for you to demand this authority or that from me; 1he who offers someone to vouch for him is himself unknown. 2I shall write, then, what you wish, but in my own way; 2meanwhile you have many writers whose works, I rather think, set things out in good enough order.
2Take into your hands the list of the philosophers; 2this very thing will compel you to wake up, if you see how many have laboured for you. 2You will long to be one of them yourself. 2For a noble mind has this finest quality in it, that it is roused towards honourable things. 2No man of lofty spirit is delighted by what is low and mean; 2the vision of great things summons him to itself and lifts him up. 3Just as a flame rises straight up, and cannot lie down or be pressed down, any more than it can be at rest; 3so our mind is in motion, the more mobile and active the more vigorous it is.
3But happy the man who has given this impulse to better things! 3He will place himself beyond the jurisdiction and dominion of fortune. 3He will moderate prosperity, crush adversity, and look down on what others admire. 4It is the mark of a great mind to despise great things and to prefer the moderate to the excessive. 4For the former are useful and life-giving; 4but the latter do harm for the very reason that they overflow. 4So excessive richness lays the corn flat, so branches are broken by too heavy a load, so excessive fertility does not reach ripeness. 4The same happens to minds too, which immoderate prosperity bursts, and they use it not only to the injury of others but also to their own.
5What enemy has ever been so insulting towards anyone as their own pleasures are towards some men? 5Their lack of self-control and their insane lust you could pardon for this one reason only, that they suffer what they have done. 5And not undeservedly does this madness torment them; 5for desire that leaps over the limit of nature must run out into the boundless. 5For that limit has its own end, while empty things and those born of lust have no bound. 6Usefulness measures what is necessary; 6by what standard will you bring the superfluous to order? 6And so they sink themselves in pleasures, which, once brought into habit, they cannot do without, and for this reason they are most wretched, that they have come to the point where what had been superfluous has become necessary to them.
6And so they are slaves to their pleasures, they do not enjoy them, and, the last of evils, they even love their own evils. 6And unhappiness is complete at the point where shameful things not only delight but also win approval, and there ceases to be any room for a remedy when what were vices have become habits. 6Farewell.