You know very well that, even though part of your Corinthian furniture were gone, the remainder might be safe without that; but if you lose one virtue (though virtue in reality cannot be lost), still if, I say, you should acknowledge that you were deficient in one, you would be stripped of all.

Can you, then, call yourself a brave man, of a great soul, endued with patience and steadiness above the frowns of fortune?
or Philoctetes?
for I choose to instance him, rather than yourself, for he certainly was not a brave man, who lay in his bed, which was watered with his tears, Whose groans, bewailings, and whose bitter cries, With grief incessant rent the very skies.
I do not deny pain to be pain--for were that the case, in what would courage consist ?--but I say it should be assuaged by patience, if there be such a thing as patience: if there be no such thing, why do we speak so in praise of philosophy?
or why do we glory in its name?
Does pain annoy us?
Let it sting us to the heart: if you are without defensive armor, bare your throat to it; but if you are secured by Vulcanian armor, that is to say by resolution, resist it.

Should you fail to do so, that guardian of your honor, your courage, will forsake and leave you .-- By the laws of Lycurgus, and by those which were given to the Cretans by Jupiter, or which Minos established under the direction of Jupiter, as the poets say, the youths of the State are trained by the practice of hunting, running, enduring hunger and thirst, cold and heat.

The boys at Sparta are scourged so at the altars that blood follows the lash in abundance; nay, sometimes, as I used to hear when I was there, they are whipped even to death; and yet not one of them was ever heard to cry out, or so much as groan.

What, then?
Shall men not be able to bear what boys do?
and shall custom have such great force, and reason none at all?
XV.