Epictetus Quotes
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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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No great thing is created suddenly.
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By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free.
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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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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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When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’.
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Nothing outside the will can hinder or harm the will; it can only harm itself. If then we accept this, and, when things go amiss, are inclined to blame ourselves, remembering that judgment alone can disturb our peace and constancy, I swear to you by all the gods that we have made progress.
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At this time is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
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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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Nothing is in reality either pleasant or unpleasant by nature but all things become so through habit.
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A soul which is conversant with virtue is like an ever flowing source, for it is pure and tranquil and potable and sweet and communicative (social) and rich and harmless and free from mischief.
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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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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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I am always content with what happens; for I know that what God chooses is better than what I choose.
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A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.
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Everything has two handles,-one by which it may be borne; another by which it cannot.
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No matter what happens, it is within my power to turn it to my advantage.
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Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.
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It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
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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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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.
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Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcome.
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Act well your given part; the choice rests not with you.
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The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.