"Nothing is truly great which it is great to despise; wealth, honor, reputation, absolute power—anything in short which has a lot of external trappings—can never seem supremely good to the wise man because it is no small good to despise them. People who could have these advantages if they chose but disdain them out of magnanimity are admired much more than those who actually possess them."
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Ch. 7 (in: Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism: Translations and Interpretations, F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1974, p. 195)
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Longinus
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