Epictetus Quotes
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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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When one maintains his proper attitude in life, he does not long after externals.
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It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance.
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Pain or pleasure? I say pleasure.
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It is not a demonstration of kindness or friendship to the people we care about to join them in indulging in wrongheaded, negative feelings. We do a better service to ourselves and others by remaining detached and avoiding melodramatic reactions.
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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.
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Seek to be the purple thread in the long white gown.
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It were no slight attainment could we merely fulfil what the nature of man implies.
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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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If you would be well spoken of, learn to be well-spoken; and having learnt to be well- spoken, strive also to be well-doing; so shall you succeed in being well spoken of.
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Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
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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.
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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.
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To pay homage to beauty is to admire Nature; to admire Nature is to worship God.
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Try to enjoy the great festival of life with other men. (3).
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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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The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.
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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 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.
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Desire and happiness cannot live together.
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Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
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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.
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Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to.