4 Maccabees 1:6-8

Common English Bible

⁶ The mind doesn’t have control over such things, but it controls the emotions and desires that resist justice, courage, and self-control. And it does this so that we won’t surrender to the emotions, not in order to destroy them.

⁷ I could show you that clear thinking has power over emotions and desires in any number of ways. ⁸ However, I can do this best by showing you the heroic courage of those who died to preserve their moral character: Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother.