Epictetus Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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At school, I'd refuse to take part in biology lessons when animals were being dissected. One time, the teacher announced that we would be gassing worms. So I ran around the room, gathered up all the worms and set them free in the fields. I just loved animals and couldn't bear the thought of them suffering.
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I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning.
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Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That's a gift that you have received from God. Don't waste it.
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In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.
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First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?
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It is high time that the Palestinian people restore their freedom and independence. It is high time that the decades, the long decades of suffering and pain would stop.
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Reducing the price of AIDS drugs gave me so much satisfaction that I've been thinking what else I could do. One day, I thought, 'Let's look at cancer and see how we can spare cancer patients' unnecessary suffering.'
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Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do.
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One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
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I lived for four years in the 1930s with these individuals and the only time that I wasn't thinking about dealing with physical suffering is when I was working on this book. I've never been more alive as when I worked on this book.
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The calls that I have received from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the fact that there are other people that are suffering every bit as much as I am, and that our whole nation is going through a tragedy together, I think we have to think about those things.
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The role of a clown and a physician are the same - it's to elevate the possible and to relieve suffering.
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People were already beginning to forget, what horrible suffering the war had brought them. I did not want to cause fear and panic, but to let people know how dreadful war is and so to stimulate people's powers of resistance.
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Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.
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God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
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For many people, commuting is the worst part of the day, and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would be a straightforward way to reduce minor but widespread suffering.
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Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed to me to be truer to a fellow in that situation to make him angry.
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Grief causes suffering and disease.
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The physician himself, if sick, actually calls in another physician, knowing that he cannot reason correctly if required to judge his own condition while suffering.
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How easy it is to deny the pain of someone else's suffering.
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Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.
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It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
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There's no point in asking focus groups. I go down the pub and hear about it there.
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What thou avoidest suffering thyself seek not to impose on others.
