Epictetus Quotes
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It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.
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Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.
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Ask yourself: Does this appearance (of events) concern the things that are within my own control or those that are not? If it concerns anything outside your control, train yourself not to worry about it.
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Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
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We should do everything both cautiously and confidently at the same time.
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If you see anybody wail and complain, call him a slave, though he be clad in purple.
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Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
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We must ever bear in mind --that apart from the will there is nothing good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or to direct events, but merely to accept them with intelligence.
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No man is able to make progress when he is wavering between opposite things.
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To get or not to get what we desire can be equally disappointing.
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If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled?
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It is not the events but our viewpoint toward events that is the determining factor. We ought to be more concerned about removing wrong thoughts from the mind than removing tumors and abscesses from the body.
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We must be afraid of neither poverty nor exile nor imprisonment; of fear itself only should we be afraid.
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To make anything a habit, do it; to not make it a habit, do not do it; to unmake a habit, do something else in place of it.
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What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.
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All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
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Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition.
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He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.
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Fight against yourself, recover yourself to decency, to modesty, to freedom. And, in the first place, condemn your actions; but when you have condemned them, do not despair of yourself. For both ruin and recovery are from within.
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It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.
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Upon all occasions we ought to have these maxims ready at hand:
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It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
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To a longer and worse life, a shorter and better is by all means to be preferred.
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If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.