A Stoic Breviary

—Epictetus, The Handbook 1 

To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. 

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. 

I practically trained a friend of mine, who worked next to me on the building, site to develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation. 

He was a surgeon and had been an assistant on the staff of a large hospital. So I once tried to get him to smile by describing to him how he would be unable to lose the habits of camp life when he returned to his former work. 

On the building site, especially when the supervisor made his tour of inspection, the foreman encouraged us to work faster by shouting: "Action! Action!" 

I told my friend, "One day you will be back in the operating room, performing a big abdominal operation. Suddenly an orderly will rush in announcing the arrival of the senior surgeon by shouting, 'Action! Action!'"

Sometimes the other men invented amusing dreams about the future, such as forecasting that during a future dinner engagement they might forget themselves when the soup was served and beg the hostess to ladle it "from the bottom." 

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who knows his former abodes, who sees heaven and hell, has reached the end of births, is perfect in knowledge, a sage, and whose perfections are all perfect. 

Again, of good things, some are things which exist in themselves and some are relative dispositions. 

Knowledge, just action, and similar things are things which exist in themselves. 

Honor, goodwill, friendship, and agreement are relative. 

And knowledge is a grasp which is secure and unchangeable by argument. 

Another definition: knowledge is a complex system of grasps of this sort, such as knowledge of the particulars, which is, in the virtuous man, rational. 

Another definition: a complex system of craftsmanlike knowledge, which provides its own stability, which is what the virtues are like. 

Another definition: a condition receptive of presentations which is unchangeable by argument, which they say consists in a tension and power of the soul. 

Friendship is a community of life. Agreement is a sharing of opinions about things relevant to life. 

Within friendship, familiarity is friendship with people who are well known to you; habituation is friendship with people you have become accustomed to; companionship is friendship by choice, such as that with one’s contemporaries; guest-friendship is friendship with foreigners; there is also a kind of family friendship between relatives; and an erotic friendship based on sexual love. 

And painlessness and organization are the same as temperance, just as insight and wits are the same as prudence, and sharing and generosity are the same as good-heartedness; for they have been given names by reference to their relative dispositions. And one must note this too in each of the other virtues. 

IMAGE: Carl Spitzweg, Childhood Friends (1855) 

—Publilius Syrus

IMAGE: John Everett Millais, Trust Me (1862)

[1] My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding; [2] that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. [3] For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; [4] but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. [5] Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; [6] she does not take heed to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it. 

IMAGE: Gustave Moreau, Delilah (c. 1896) 

Man's character is his fate. 

IMAGE: Henry Fuseli, The Death of Oedipus (c. 1784)