Show me a Stoic, if you have one to show: where or how? But Stoic doctrines you can show me by the thousand and tens of thousands, both in those who speak them and those who write them. Who then shows the Stoic? Show me one man molded to the pattern of his judgments, in the way you can show me a sculptor's work and call it Pheidian. Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in danger and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and yet happy, in evil report and yet happy. Show me him — by the gods I would gladly see a Stoic.
But you cannot show me one fully so formed; then show me at least one who is forming himself, one who has set his feet on the way. Do me this kindness; do not grudge an old man the sight of that spectacle which to this day I have not seen. Do you think you are to show me the Zeus of Phidias or the Athene, a work of ivory and gold? Let one of you show me a human soul ready to be of one mind with God, and never again to blame God or man, never to fail in anything that he wills, never to fall into anything that he wills to avoid, never to be angry, never to be envious, never to be jealous.
The deliberate move at the end of the first paragraph: doctrines exist by the thousand. Stoics are absent. The library is full; the school is empty. Epictetus then names the standard so high — happy in disgrace, in danger, in dying, of one mind with the telos the gods set — that no one in the room can claim it. The retreat to "one who is forming himself" is what saves the project. The working target is not the sage. The working target is the prokoptōn, the practitioner on the path. That is enough — and it is also the minimum.
Epictetus, Discourses 2.19.24-28 · trans. P. E. Matheson (1916)
Context
A passage that goes directly to the question every Stoic practitioner eventually asks themselves — have I changed at all, or have I only collected positions? Epictetus is brutal about the difference. He then relents, slightly — the standard is the sage, but the working target is the prokoptōn, the person making progress.