Epictetus Quotes
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A ship should not be held by a single anchor; neither should life depend upon a single hope.
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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 essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.
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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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You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in your power to conquer.
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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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Books are the training weights of the mind.
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When your thoughts, words, and deeds form a seamless fabric, you streamline your efforts and thus eliminate worry and dread.
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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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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?
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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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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.
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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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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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Confident because of our caution.
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Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control. Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self: for that does fall within your control.
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Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.
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If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
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In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it.
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Men are not worried by things, but by their ideas about things. When we meet with difficulties, become anxious or troubled, let us not blame others, but rather ourselves. That is: our ideas about things.
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An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.
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Practice yourself, for heaven's sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.
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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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I am not eternity, but a man; a part of the whole, as an hour is of the day.