Epictetus Quotes
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Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.
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Choose the life that is noblest, for custom can make it sweet to thee.
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Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses: if short, then in a short one; if long, then in a long one. If it be His pleasure that you should enact a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, see that you act it well. For this is your business, to act well the given part. But to choose it belongs to Another.
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Everything has two handles,-one by which it may be borne; another by which it cannot.
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Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process.
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Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well. The choice of the cast is Another's.
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Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.
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I am always content with what happens; for I know that what God chooses is better than what I choose.
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The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature endeared to each other.
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Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours.
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We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
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It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself. (5) tr. George Long (1888).
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To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.
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Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?
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This whole world is one great City, and one is the substance whereof it is fashioned: a certain period indeed there needs must be, while these give place to those; some must perish for others to succeed; some move and some abide: yet all is full of friends-first God, then Men, whom Nature hath bound by ties of kindred each to each. (123).
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What thou avoidest suffering thyself seek not to impose on others.
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Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.
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If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you. Therefore, when anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgment of the incident that provokes you.
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It is better to advise than upbraid, for the one corrects the erring; the other only convicts them.
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As you think, so you become.....Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there.
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Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.
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No great thing is created suddenly.
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Renew every day your conversation with God: Do this even in preference to eating. Think more often of God than you breathe.
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Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcome.