Epictetus Quotes
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Ruin and recovering are both from within.
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What will the world be quite overturned when you die?
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Try to enjoy the great festival of life with other men. (3).
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If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.
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At every occasion in your life, do not forget to commune with yourself and ask of yourself how you can profit by it.
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You have been given your own work to do. Get to it right now, do your best at it, and don't be concerned with who is watching you. Create your own merit.
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Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.
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Our duties naturally emerge form such fundamental relations as our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, our state or nation. Make it your regular habit to consider your roles-parent, child, neighbor, citizen, leader-and the natural duties that arise from them. Once you know who you are and to whom you are linked, you will know what to do.
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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.
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Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices me wherever I am or whatever I do.
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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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What disturbs and alarms man are not the things, but his opinions and fancies about the things.
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A man that seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.
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It is your own convictions which compels you; that is, choice compels choice.
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Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.
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If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher.
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If a man has reported to you, that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense (answer) to what has been told you: but reply, The man did not know the rest of my faults, for he would not have mentioned these only. (33) tr. George Long (1888).
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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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The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.
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Neither the victories of the Olympic Games nor those achieved in battles make the man happy. The only victories that make him happy are those achieved against himself. Temptations and tests are combats. You have beaten one, two, many times; still fight. If you defeat at last you will be happy your entire life, as if you have always defeated.
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The materials are indifferent, but the use we make of them is not a matter of indifference.
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First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
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Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.
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It is not my place in society that makes me well off, but my judgements, and these I can carry with me... These alone are my own and cannot be taken away.