Epictetus Quotes
-
Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.
-
Freedom and happiness come from understanding - and working with - our limits. Begin at once a program of self-mastery. Stick with your purpose. Do not seek external approval. Do not worry about anything outside of your control. The only things you command are your thoughts and actions. We choose our response. Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self: for that does fall within your control.
-
Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.
-
When men are unhappy, they do not imagine they can ever cease to be so; and when some calamity has fallen on them, they do not see how they can get rid of it. Nevertheless, both arrive; and the gods have ordered it so, in the end men seek it from the gods.
-
When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
-
No living being is held by anything so strongly as its own needs.
-
Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?
-
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.
-
If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.
-
What is a good person? One who achieves tranquillity by having formed the habit of asking on every occasion, "what is the right thing to do now?"
-
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.
-
If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.
-
Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.
-
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.
-
The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.
-
Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.
-
Learn to distinguish what you can and can't control. Within our control are our own opinions, aspirations, desires and the things that repel us. They are directly subject to our influence.
-
Do nothing in a depressed mood, nor as one afflicted, nor as thinking that you are in misery, for no one compels you to that.
-
If you have anything better to be doing when death overtakes you, get to work on that.
-
The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom. Only the educated are free.
-
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.
-
If any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone. For God hath made all men to enjoy felicity and constancy of good.
-
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.
-
It's so simple really: If you say you're going to do something, do it. If you start something, finish it.