What I really like about this quote is Musonius' emphasis on how lost we are if we are not part of a community. That's a very rare point of view in Stoicism.
"Tell me, then, shouldn't everyone do things for his neighbor as well as for himself and thus make sure that his city has thriving families and that it is not a wasteland? Isn't this how commonwealths thrive? To say that each should look only to his own affairs is to admit that a human being is no different from a wolf or any of the other wildest beasts whose nature it is to live by force and greed. They spare nothing that they can devour, they have no share in companionship, they take no part in working with each other, and they have no share in anything just. But you will agree that human nature is very much like that of bees. A bee is not able to live alone: it perishes when isolated."
- Musonius Rufus, Lectures 14.3
Coin, depicting a bee, from the Ancient Greek city Ephesus.
"Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it."
"suppose that a wise man should be vouchsaved such a life that, with an abundance of everything pouring in upon him, he might in perfect peace study and ponder over everything that is worth knowing, still, if the solitude were so complete that he could never see a human being, he would die."
Thank goodness that some of Musonius' words survived, through Epictetus and others. Indeed, we are social animals and we don't flourish alone.
"Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it."
- Seneca, Letter 6.4.
"suppose that a wise man should be vouchsaved such a life that, with an abundance of everything pouring in upon him, he might in perfect peace study and ponder over everything that is worth knowing, still, if the solitude were so complete that he could never see a human being, he would die."
- Cicero, De Officiis, 1.153