Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights
John C. Rolfe, Ed.

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“[p. 267] character, reckless, boastful, and cultivating everything else except his soul—when he saw such a man taking up also the study and pursuit of philosophy, attacking natural history, practising logic and balancing and investigating many problems of that kind, he used to invoke the help ¹ of gods and men, and usually amid his exclamations chided the man in these terms: 'O man, where are you storing these things? Consider whether the vessel be clean. For if you take them into your self-conceit, they are lost; if they are spoiled, they become urine or vinegar or something worse, if possible.'” Nothing surely could be weightier, nothing truer than these words, in which the greatest of philosophers declared that the learning and precepts of philosophy, flowing into a base and degenerate man, as if into a soiled and filthy vessel, are turned, altered, spoiled, and as he himself more cynically expresses it, become urine or, if possible, something worse than urine. Moreover, that same Epictetus, as we also heard from Favorinus, used to say that there were two faults which were by far the worst and most disgusting of all, lack of endurance and lack of self-restraint, when we cannot put up with or bear the wrongs which we ought to endure, or cannot restrain ourselves from actions or pleasures from which we ought to refrain. “Therefore,” said he, “if anyone would take these two words to heart and use them for his own guidance and regulation, he will be almost without sin and will lead a very peaceful life. These two words,” he said, “are ἀνέχου (bear) and ἀπέχου (forbear).” ²