Epictetus Quotes
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The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys.
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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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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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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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People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.
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It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
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It is wicked to withdraw from being useful to the needy, and cowardly to give way to the worthless.
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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 is not reasonings that are wanted now; for there are books stuffed full of stoical reasonings.
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We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.
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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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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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When the Idea, of any Pleasure strikes your Imagination... let that time be employed in making a just Computation between, the duration of the Pleasure, and that of the Repentance sure to follow it.
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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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It is not events that disturb the minds of men, but the view they take of them.
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Act your part with honor.
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Living a good life leads to enduring happiness. Goodness in and of itself is the practice AND the reward.
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No living being is held by anything so strongly as by its own needs. Whatever therefore appears a hindrance to these, be it brother, or father, or child, or mistress, or friend, is hated, abhorred, execrated.
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What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.
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He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.
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All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
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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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We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.
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God has entrusted me with myself.