Epictetus Quotes
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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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Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
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Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
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Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure.
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First tell yourself what you want to be, then do what you need to do.
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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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Try to enjoy the great festival of life with other men. (3).
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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.
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It were no slight attainment could we merely fulfil what the nature of man implies.
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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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If you think you control things that are in the control of others, you will lament. You will be disturbed and you will blame both gods and men.
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Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
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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.
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It is your own convictions which compels you; that is, choice compels choice.
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Seek to be the purple thread in the long white gown.
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A man that seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.
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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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Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
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Desire and happiness cannot live together.
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Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.
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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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What will the world be quite overturned when you die?
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When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it; for, if you don't act right, shun the action itself; but, if you do, why are you afraid of those who censure you wrongly? (35).
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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.