"<p>People like to be rude and hateful as soon as they get the chance; and most of the time they are indeed as peculiarly cruel as children. But you remain humble, and at the same time keep your dignity. For you can only keep both at the same time. Your dignity will be a distorted conduct, if it is not backed by the consciousness of the humility of your fallible being; your humble conduct will be the expression of the cowardice of a sissy, if it is not backed by a sense of your human dignity. If you must live among men - and you are neither tapir nor vulture, so where else can you live? -you must rule and obey at the same time, always with dignity and modesty, always with seriousness and readiness, always with humility and dignity. Otherwise you are but a boastful freebooter, a pitiful and cowardly slave. But Epictetus was indeed a slave: yet he bore this fate with humility and ruled over men.</p>"