Epictetus Quotes
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When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it. It is not the things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor are they what they seem to be. They are what they are.
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Try not to react merely in the moment. Pull back from the situation. Take a wider view. Compose yourself.
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The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions.
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People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.
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When you have decided that a thing ought to be done and are doing it, never avoid bein seen doing it, though many shall form an unfavorable opinion about it. For if it is not right to do it, avoid doing the thing; but if it is right, why are you afraid of those who shall find fault wrongly?
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Who is not attracted by bright and pleasant children, to prattle, to creep, and to play with them?
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A soul that makes virtue its companion is like an over-flowing well, for it is clean and pellucid, sweet and wholesome, open to all, rich, blameless and indestructible.
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If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you? (28) tr. Elizabeth Carter
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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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It is wicked to withdraw from being useful to the needy, and cowardly to give way to the worthless.
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As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new.
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'But to be hanged-is that not unendurable?' Even so, when a man feels that it is reasonable, he goes off and hangs himself.
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You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in your power to conquer.
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Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
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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 the room is smoky, if only moderately, I will stay; if there is too much smoke I will go. Remember this, keep a firm hold on it, the door is always open.'
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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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The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
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In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it.
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To be getting an education means this: to be learning what is your own, and what is not your own.
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There is only one thing for which God has sent me into the world, and that is to develop every kind of virtue or strength, and there is nothing in all the world that I cannot use for this purpose.
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God has entrusted me with myself.
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It is no easy thing for a principle to become a man's own unless each day he maintains it and works it out in his life.
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It is not he who gives abuse that affronts, but the view that we take of it as insulting; so that when one provokes you it is your own opinion which is provoking.