Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

Epictetus (50–135 CE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher who believed that philosophy was a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. He taught that all external events are beyond one’s control, and thus one should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. In addition, Epictetus believed in individual responsibility for one’s actions through rigorous self-discipline.