From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk
To: An unnamed person
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore warns that obsessive theater-going produces the obsessive passion that ruins lives, and urges flight from the beginning of temptation.
The one who is mad about theaters, O dear friend, becomes mad about love. Flee the one, therefore, so that the other may not be born from it.
It is better that a disease not take root at all than to have to uproot it after it has taken hold — which for some people is difficult, and for others impossible. This is why the physician of the soul says: do not start. Do not reason with yourself about whether you can handle what has already destroyed better men. The time to show strength is before the habit forms, not after. The man who waits until the theater has become a need, and love has become a madness, has already lost the fight he thought he was managing.
Context:Isidore warns that obsessive theater-going produces the obsessive passion that ruins lives, and urges flight from the beginning of temptation.
The one who is mad about theaters, O dear friend, becomes mad about love. Flee the one, therefore, so that the other may not be born from it.
It is better that a disease not take root at all than to have to uproot it after it has taken hold — which for some people is difficult, and for others impossible. This is why the physician of the soul says: do not start. Do not reason with yourself about whether you can handle what has already destroyed better men. The time to show strength is before the habit forms, not after. The man who waits until the theater has become a need, and love has become a madness, has already lost the fight he thought he was managing.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.