Prudence

Prudence, it must be granted, does do this;

and Prudence is right principle in matters of conduct.

Now rightness in our choice of an end is secured by Virtue;

He held that they needed first to acquire prudence.

In the first place, then, he tried to make his companions prudent towards the gods.

Thus by precept and by example alike he strove to increase in his companions Piety and Prudence.

Since, then, as medicine is the art of health, steering of navigation, so prudence is the art of living, it is necessary that it too be established and proceed from some thing.

But it has been pretty well agreed among all that that in which prudence is concerned, and which it wishes to attain, ought to be fitted and accommodated to nature, and such that of itself it invites and allures the appetite of the mind, which the Greeks call horme.

Since of these three some one is that by which nature is first moved either to seeking or to repelling, and nothing at all besides these three can be, it is necessary that the whole duty of fleeing or following be referred to some one of them, so that that prudence which we said is the art of life is concerned with some one of those three things, from which it draws the beginning of the whole life.

Philosophy, then, having partaken of a more excellent perception, as has been shown from the foregoing, partakes of prudence.

And prudence, being of many parts, stretched through the whole world and through all human affairs, changes its name in each of them:

This power, then, we must acquire from Medea—that is, from prudence—and, having received it, thereafter despise all things.

it is manifestly a gift of the gods to the true votaries of prudence.