Epictetus Quotes
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We need to regularly stop and take stock; to sit down and determine within ourselves which things are worth valuing and which things are not; which risks are worth the cost and which are not. Even the most confusing or hurtful aspects of life can be made more tolerable by clear seeing and by choice.
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To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control, but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, human beings have a duty of care to all fellow humans. The person who followed these precepts would achieve happiness.
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Upon all occasions we ought to have these maxims ready at hand:
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Freedom isn't the right or ability to do whatever you please. Freedom comes from understanding the limits of our own power and the inherent limits set in place by nature. By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, you become truly free.
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Act your part with honor.
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Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services; for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.
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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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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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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 not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
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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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It is not events that disturb the minds of men, but the view they take of them.
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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.
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There is a fine circumstance connected with the character of a Cynic,-that he must be beaten like an ass, and yet when beaten must love those who beat him, as the father, as the brother of all.
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It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body; for it is better to die than to live badly.
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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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We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.
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You become what you give your attention to...If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest.
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He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.
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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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We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.
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If you wish to be a writer, write.
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What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.
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If you have assumed a character above your strength, you have both acted in this matter in an unbecoming way, and you have neglected that which you might have fulfilled.