Epictetus Quotes
-
To live a life of virtue, match up your thoughts, words, and deeds.
-
Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.
-
Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to a humble and grateful mind.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them.
-
Cowardice, the dread of what will happen.
-
Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process.
-
Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours.
-
Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.
-
It has been ordained that there be summer and winter, abundance and dearth, virtue and vice, and all such opposites for the harmony of the whole, and (Zeus) has given each of us a body, property, and companions.
-
Common and vulgar people ascribe all ills that they feel to others; people of little wisdom ascribe to themselves; people of much wisdom, to no one.
-
Avoid banquets which are given by strangers an ignorant persons. But if there is ever occasion to join them, let your attention be carefully fixed, that you slip not into the manner of the vulgar (the uninstructed).
-
Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.
-
In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.
-
There are some things which men confess with ease, and others with difficulty.
-
If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.
-
A vulgar man, in any ill that happens to him, blames others; a novice in philosophy blames himself; and a philosopher blames neither, the one nor the other.
-
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
-
I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?
-
Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.
-
At every occasion in your life, do not forget to commune with yourself and ask of yourself how you can profit by it.
-
Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.
-
O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?