Miscellanies in Prose and Verse

land of his enemies is the greatest proof of his strength and the flourishing condition of his armies.

Again, the intention of an injury is to bring an evil on someone; but wisdom leaves no place for evil, for the only evil to wisdom is baseness, which cannot enter where virtue and worth reside. Injury, therefore, cannot reach the wise man; for if an injury is to be passive to some evil, but a wise man suffers no ill, no injury can reach him. Again, every injury is a diminution of the person who is injured; nor can anyone receive an injury without some detriment to his dignity, body, or external concerns. But a wise man can lose nothing; he has deposited everything in himself; he trusts nothing to fortune, but solidly possesses his own good, content with virtue, which is not in need of fortuitous things. Hence, it can neither be increased nor diminished, for things which have arrived at the summit afford no place for increase.

Fortune takes away nothing except that which she gave; but she does not give virtue, and therefore does not take it away. Virtue is free, inviolable, unmoved, unshaken, and so hardened against casualties that she cannot even be made to incline, much less can she be vanquished. At the approach of things of a terrible nature, she looks with