Epictetus Quotes
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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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To a longer and worse life, a shorter and better is by all means to be preferred.
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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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People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.
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Act your part with honor.
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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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It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
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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.
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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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Upon all occasions we ought to have these maxims ready at hand:
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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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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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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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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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You will do the greatest service to the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls of the citizens: for it is better that great souls should dwell in small houses rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses.
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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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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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What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.
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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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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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It is not reasonings that are wanted now; for there are books stuffed full of stoical reasonings.
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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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Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.
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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.