Epictetus Quotes
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Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
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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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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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Give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths.
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It is your own convictions which compels you; that is, choice compels choice.
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A man that seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.
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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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Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly without our own control.
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Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.
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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.
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It's so simple really: If you say you're going to do something, do it. If you start something, finish it.
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Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.
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Nothing truly stops you. Nothing truly holds you back. For your own will is always within your control.
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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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Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse.
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Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
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Against specious appearances we must set clear convictions, bright and ready for use. When death appears as an evil, we ought immediately to remember that evils are things to be avoided, but death is inevitable.
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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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Wisdom means understanding without any doubt that circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they may. People behave as they will.
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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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When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
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Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure.
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When we name things correctly, we comprehend them correctly, without adding information or judgements that aren't there. Does someone bathe quickly? Don't say be bathes poorly, but quickly. Name the situation as it is, don't filter it through your judgments. Give your assent only to that which is actually true.
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No living being is held by anything so strongly as its own needs.