To me such are the only men who appear completely happy; for what can he want to a complete happy life who relies on his own good qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them?
But he who makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall continue?
But no one can be happy without an immovable, fixed, and permanent good.

What, then, is this opinion of theirs?
So that I think that saying of the Spartan may be applied to them, who, on some merchant's boasting before him that he had despatched ships to every maritime coast, replied that a fortune which depended on ropes was not very desirable.

Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life?
for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy: the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such.

As he is not called innocent who but slightly offends, but he who offends not at all, so it is he alone who is to be considered without fear who is free from all fear, not he who is but in little fear.

For what else is courage but an affection of mind that is ready to undergo perils, and patient in the endurance of pain and labor without any alloy of fear?
Now, this certainly could not be the case if there were anything else good but what depended on honesty alone.