50. No More Later, Start Now

Near the end of the book, Epictetus stops being gentle. No more waiting. No more later. Start being the person you have been talking about becoming.

Whatever rules you have carefully set for yourself to live by, hold to them as laws.

Live as though you would commit an offense by breaking any one of them.

Do not mind what anyone says about you. That, after all, is no concern of yours.

How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the best growth, and worthy of never breaking the rules of reason?

You have received the lessons of philosophy you should be at home with, and you have been at home with them. What other master, then, are you waiting for, to throw on him the delay of your reform?

You are no longer a boy. You are a grown man.

If you go on being careless and slow, and always add delay to delay, resolve to resolve, and set one more day after another on which you will turn your attention to yourself, then, without noticing, you will go on without real progress.

You will live and you will die as one of the crowd.

From this moment, then, think yourself worthy of living as a grown person, as one making progress.

Let whatever seems best to you be an unbreakable law.

If any instance of pain or pleasure, of glory or disgrace, comes before you, remember:

Now is the contest. Now the Olympic Games have begun. There can be no putting off.

One defeat, one yielding, and progress is lost or kept.

Socrates became what he was by holding to nothing but reason, improving himself by everything that came.

Though you are not yet a Socrates, you should live as one who wants to become one.

What this means. Stop waiting for the right moment. This one is it. The person you wanted to be starts, or does not start, today.