The Success comes to the common man and even to the commonplace ability, but to triumph over

the calamities and terrors of mortal life is the part of a great man only.

Truly to be always happy and to pass through life without a mental pang is to be ignorant of one half of nature.

You are a great man, but how do I know it if Fortune gives you no opportunity of showing your worth?

You have entered as a contestant at the Olympic Games, but none other besides you. You gain the crown the

victory you do not gain. You have my congratulations, but not as a brave man, but as if you

had obtained the consulship or proctorship, you have enhanced

your prestige.

In like manner also, I may say to a good man, if no harder circumstance has given him the opportunity whereby he alone

might show the strength of his mind, I judge you unfortunate, you have passed through life

without an antagonist. No one will know what you can do, not even yourself.

For if a man is to know himself, he must be tested.

No one finds out what he can do except by trying and so some men have presented themselves voluntarily to laggard misfortune and have sought an opportunity to blazing forth their worth when it was about to pass into obscurity.

Great men, I say, rejoice oft times in adversity as do brave soldiers in warfare.

I once heard Triumphus, a gladiator in the time of Tiberius Caesar,

complaining of the scarcity of shows. How fair an age, he said, has passed away.

Trueworth is eager for danger and thinks rather of its goal than of what it may have to suffer,

since even what it will have to suffer is a part of its glory.

Warriors glory in their wounds and rejoice to display the blood spilled with luckier fortune.

Those who return from the battle unhurt may have fought as well, but the man who returns with a wound wins the greater regard.

God, I say, is showing favor to those whom he desires to achieve the highest possible virtue whenever he gives them the means of doing a courageous and brave deed.

And to this end they must encounter some difficulty in life.

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