1You complain that there is a shortage of books where you are. 1It does not matter how many you have, but how good; 1settled reading is profitable, varied reading is pleasant. 1He who wants to arrive where he has set his course should follow a single road and not wander along many. 1That is not travelling but straying. 2'I would rather,' you say, 'you gave me advice than books.' 2For my part, I am ready to send you whatever books I have and to empty out the whole storehouse. 2I would transport myself there too, if I could, and if I did not hope that you would soon obtain the end of your term of office, I would have proclaimed this old man's expedition for myself, nor could Charybdis and Scylla and that fabled strait have deterred me.
2I would have swum across, not merely sailed over, provided that I could embrace you and judge in person how much you had grown in spirit. 3For the rest, your wish that my own books be sent to you does not make me think myself any more eloquent than I would think myself handsome if you asked for my portrait. 3I know that this comes from affection, not from judgement. 3And if it does come from judgement, affection has imposed upon you. 4But whatever they are like, read them as though I were still seeking the truth, not knowing it, and seeking it stubbornly. 4For I have not sold myself into anyone's ownership; I bear no one's name.
4I trust a great deal to the judgement of great men; I claim something for my own as well. 4For they too have left to us things not discovered but still to be sought, and they might perhaps have discovered what was necessary, had they not also sought what was superfluous. 5Much of their time was snatched from them by quibbling about words, by captious disputations which exercise a sharpness to no purpose. 5We tie knots, and bind ambiguous meanings onto words, and then untie them. 5Have we so much leisure? 5Do we already know how to live, how to die? 5We must advance with our whole mind towards that point where we must take care not to be deceived by things, rather than by words.
6Why do you distinguish for me between similar words, by which no one has ever been caught except while disputing? 6It is things that deceive; 6distinguish between them. 6We embrace evils in place of goods; 6we pray for the opposite of what we prayed for. 6Our prayers fight with our prayers, our plans with our plans. 7How like friendship flattery is! 7It not only imitates it but outdoes and surpasses it; 7it is received by open and favourable ears and sinks down into the depths of the heart, welcome for the very reason that it does harm. 7Teach me how I can distinguish this likeness. 7An enemy comes to me, fawning, in place of a friend.
7Vices creep upon us under the name of virtues: rashness hides under the title of courage, sloth is called moderation, the coward is taken for the cautious man; 7in these we go astray at great peril. 7Stamp them with sure marks. 8For the rest, a man who is asked whether he has horns is not so foolish as to feel his forehead, nor again so silly or dull as not to know that you have persuaded him by a most subtle syllogism. 8Thus these things deceive without harm, like the conjurors' cups and pebbles, in which the very trickery delights me. 8Make me understand how it is done; 8I have lost the pleasure.
8I say the same about these traps; 8for by what better name should I call sophisms? 8They neither harm the man who does not know them nor help the man who does. 9If you really want to unravel the ambiguities of words, teach us this: that the happy man is not the one whom the crowd calls happy, into whose lap great wealth has flowed, but the one whose every good is in his mind, upright and lofty and trampling on what is changeable, who sees no one with whom he would wish to change places, who values a man only by that part by which he is a man, who uses nature as his teacher, shapes himself by her laws, and lives as she has prescribed, whose goods no force can strike from him, who turns evils into good, sure in judgement, unshaken, fearless, whom some force may move but none can throw into confusion, whom fortune, when with all her might she has hurled the most harmful weapon she had, pricks but does not wound, and that rarely.
9For her other weapons, by which the human race is vanquished, bounce off like hail, which, striking the roofs, rattles and melts without any harm to the inhabitant. 10Why do you detain me with that which you yourself call the 'liar', about which so many books have been composed? 10Look, my whole life lies to me; 10refute that, bring that back to the truth, if you are clever. 10It judges things necessary of which a great part is superfluous. 10Even what is not superfluous has no weight in itself towards making a person fortunate and happy. 10For a thing is not good straight away just because it is necessary; 10or else we cheapen the good, if we give this name to bread and barley meal and the other things without which life is not carried on.
11What is good is in every case necessary; 11what is necessary is not in every case good, since indeed some necessary things are also the cheapest. 11No one is so ignorant of the dignity of the good as to lower it to these things that are useful for the day. 12What then? 12Will you not rather transfer your care to showing everyone that superfluous things are sought at a great expense of time, and that many have passed through life while gathering the means of living? 12Review men one by one, consider them all together; 12there is no one whose life does not look towards tomorrow. 13Do you ask what harm there is in this?
13Boundless harm. 13For they do not live, but are about to live. 13They put everything off. 13Even if we paid attention, life would still outrun us; 13as it is, while we delay, it runs past us as though it belonged to another, and though it ends on the last day, it perishes on every day. 13But so as not to exceed the proper size of a letter, which ought not to fill the reader's left hand, I shall put off to another day this dispute with the dialecticians, who are far too subtle and care only about this and not about that as well. 13Farewell.