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20To this Cicero replied: “But not one of these things is of use when some grief is preying upon one’s mind; for mental cares cause one far more distress than bodily comforts cause pleasure. Even so, I also at present set no value on my physical health, because I am suffering in mind, nor yet on the abundance of necessaries; for my loss is great indeed.”
2“And does this grieve you?” replied the other. “Now if you were going to be in want of things needful, there would be some reason for your being annoyed at your loss. But since you have all the necessaries in full measure, why do you distress yourself because you do not possess more? For all that one has beyond one’s needs is superfluous, and amounts to the same thing whether present or absent; since surely you did not make use formerly of what was not necessary. 3Consider, therefore, either that then what you did not need you did not have, or else that you now have what you do not need. Most of these things, indeed, were not yours by inheritance, that you should be particularly exercised about them, but were acquired by your own tongue and by your own words—the very things which caused you to lose them. 4You should not, therefore, be vexed if things have been lost in the same manner in which they were won. Ship-masters, for example, do not take it greatly to heart when they suffer great losses; for they understand, I suspect, how to take the sensible view of it, namely, that the sea which gives them wealth takes it away again.
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