“You are neither flesh nor possessions, but only the faculty of choice.”Epictet · Manualul · 125 · capitolul 41
Epictet reduces the person to the one thing nobody can take away: the power to judge and to choose. The body can be injured, wealth confiscated, reputation destroyed; all of these are borrowed things belonging to fortune. The faculty of choice, by contrast, cannot be touched from outside. A person who loses everything in a disaster loses objects, not the self; the self survives in the way one responds to the loss.
Why it matters It anchors anyone who confuses their worth with what they own or how they look, reminding them that their core is untouchable and cannot be seized by any loss.