Epictetus Quotes
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The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions.
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If you seek Truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found Truth, you need not fear being defeated.
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What disturbs people's minds are not events but their judgments on events.
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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).
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Never say of anything I have lost it, only say that I have given it back.
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He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.
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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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The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.
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Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions.
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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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Every art and every faculty contemplates certain things as its principal objects.
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It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else were happiness also impossible.
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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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Confident because of our caution.
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In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it.
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He who is not happy with little will never be happy with much.
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You are a principal work, a fragment of [Goddess herself], you have in yourself a part of [her]. Why then are you ignorant of your high birth?
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When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.
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It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
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Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men.
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The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
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Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
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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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Practice yourself, for heaven's sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.