Epictetus Quotes
-
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.
-
If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.
-
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
-
To a longer and worse life, a shorter and better is by all means to be preferred.
-
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.
-
You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.
-
The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.
-
Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation.
-
And have you not received faculties which will enable you to bear all that happens to you? Have you not received greatness of spirit? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?
-
Each man's life is a kind of campaign, and a long and complicated one at that. You have to maintain the character of a soldier, and do each separate act at the bidding of the General.
-
It is not reasonings that are wanted now; for there are books stuffed full of stoical reasonings.
-
You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.
-
Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.
-
Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.
-
Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?
-
He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.
-
Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, 'Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.'
-
Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions,-as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.
-
It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
-
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
-
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.
-
Have this thought ever present with thee, when thou losest any outward thing, what thou gainest in its stead; and if this be the more precious, say not, I have suffered loss. (27).
-
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.
-
As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new.