If you would have your children and your wife and your friends to live
for ever, you are silly; for you would have the things which are not in
your power to be in your power, and the things which belong to others
to be yours. So if you would have your slave to be free from faults,
you are a fool; for you would have badness not to be badness, but
something else. But if you wish not to fail in your desires, you are
able to do that. Practise then this which you are able to do. He is the
master of every man who has the power over the things which another
person wishes or does not wish, the power to confer them on him or to
take them away. Whoever then wishes to be free let him neither wish for
anything nor avoid anything which depends on others: if he does not
observe this rule, he must be a slave.