To Florus 2.233

To avoid seeming to command anything arduous and inaccessible to a human being, he took an expression from ordinary speech and called it ‘human’: that is, easy to handle, something made gentler by comparing the cases. I do not demand of you, he says, an intensity matching these exalted realities; nor, great as virtue’s riches are, do I establish correspondingly novel commands by which you must obtain them. I impose nothing harsh, prescribe nothing barely bearable. If I commanded such a thing in proportion to righteousness’s splendor, you might complain of the flesh’s weakness and plead that you could not bear constant toil. So now I address you with this moderation: apply to virtues the same effort you previously applied to crimes. Although it insults honorable things to pursue them with merely the same determination spent on disgraceful things, it nevertheless suffices for your present training if you pursue righteousness with at least the intensity with which you pursued lawlessness and impurity.