You can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you. - Epictetus

The man has to learn ‘what each specific thing means’, as Socrates often said, and stop casually applying preconceptions to individual cases.

But my nose is running!' What do you have hands for, idiot, if not to wipe it? 'But how is it right that there be running noses in the first place?' Instead of thinking up protests, wouldn't it be easier just to wipe your nose?

When we are guests at a dinner party, we content ourselves with the food on offer; if anyone were to tell the host to put out fish or cake, he would seem rude. In real life, however, we ask the gods for what they do not give, and this though they have provided us with plenty.