Bound Like a Sheep
If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are foolish. You wish things to be in your power which are not so, and what belongs to others to be your own. If you wish your servant to be without fault, you are foolish: you wish vice not to be vice. If you wish not to be disappointed in your desires, that is in your own power. A man's master is he who can confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Wish nothing, decline nothing, which depends on others, or you must necessarily be a slave.
Key Insight
The people you love become your masters the moment their survival is the condition of your peace. Freedom is not colder love. It is love that will not rent itself to a landlord who can die.
“Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.”Explore full theme analysis
