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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: clearly better than slowness and quietness?
Clearly they are.
Then temperance is not quietness, nor is the temperate life quiet,--
certainly not upon this view; for the life which is temperate is supposed
to be the good. And of two things, one is true,--either never, or very
seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and
energetic ones; or supposing that of the nobler actions, there are as many
quiet, as quick and vehement: still, even if we grant this, temperance
will not be acting quietly any more than acting quickly and energetically,
either in walking or talking or in anything else; nor will the quiet life
be more temperate than the unquiet, seeing that temperance is admitted by
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