Epictetus Quotes
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The soul is unwillingly deprived of truth.
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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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Opportunity beckons more surely when misfortune comes upon a person than it ever does when that person is riding the crest of a wave of success. It sharpens a person's wits, if that person will let it, enabling him or her to see more clearly and evaluate situations with a more knowledgeable judgment.
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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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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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Happiness and personal fulfillment are the natural consequences of doing the right thing.
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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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Books are the training weights of the mind.
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Give thyself more diligently to reflection: know thyself: take counsel with the Godhead; without God put thine hand into nothing. (115).
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Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men.
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The wise realize that some things are within their control, and most things are not. They learn early on to distinguish between what they can and can't regulate.
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In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it.
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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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When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many things! (35).
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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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Practice yourself, for heaven's sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.
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Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.
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Every art and every faculty contemplates certain things as its principal objects.
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Give me by all means the shorter and nobler life, instead of one that is longer but of less account!
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From now on practice saying to everything that appears unpleasant: You are merely an appearance and NOT what you appear to be.
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There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
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Happiness is an equivalent for all troublesome things.
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Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.
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If what the philosophers say be true,-that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain,-so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.