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Plotinus – The Enneads

Once the man is a proficient, the means of happiness, the way to good, are within, for nothing is good that lies outside him.  Anything he desires further than this he seeks as a necessity, and not for himself but for a subordinate, for the body bound to him, to which, since it has life, he must minister the needs of life, not needs however to the true man of this degree.  He knows himself to stand above all such things, and what he gives to the lower he so gives as to leave his true self undiminished.

Adverse fortune does not shake his felicity; the life so founded is stable ever.  Suppose death strikes at his household or at his friends; he knows what death is, as the victims, if they are among the wise know too.  And if death taking from him his familiars and intimates does bring grief; it is not to him, not to the true man, but to that in him which stands apart from the supreme, to that lower man in whose distress he takes no part.

But what of sorrows, illnesses, and all else that inhabit the native activity?  What of the suspension of consciousness which drugs or disease may bring about?  Could either welfare or happiness be present under such conditions?  And this is to say nothing of misery and disgrace, which will certainly be urged against us, with undoubtedly also those never failing 'Miseries of Priam'.

'The proficient' we shall be told, 'may bear such afflictions and even take them lightly but they could never be his choice and the happy life must be one that would be chosen'