Quotes About Epictetus

#1. Asked how a man should best grieve his enemy, Epictetus replied, By setting himself to live the noblest life himself.

Epictetus

#2. You are a spirit, bearing the weight of a dead body, as Epictetus used to say.

Marcus Aurelius

#3. Torn between violence and disillusionment, I seem to myself a terrorist who, going out in the street to perpetrate some outrage, stops on the way to consult Ecclesiastes or Epictetus.

Emil Cioran

#4. I can't speak for Aeschylus or Epictetus or Aristotle. But I am convinced of this: they would have hated having their wisdom confined to classrooms and textbooks. This is wisdom about how to live. And it's your property as much as anyone's. It is yours. Take it. Use it.

Eric Greitens

#5. Asked, Who is the rich man? Epictetus replied, "He who is content.

Epictetus

#6. As Epictetus said centuries ago, "It is impossible to begin to learn what one thinks one already knows." This

Liz Wiseman

#7. Epictetus being asked how a man should give pain to his enemy answered, By preparing himself to live the best life that he can.

Epictetus

#8. No person is free who is not master of himself. Epictetus

Avery Breyer

#9. The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.

Blaise Pascal

#10. OUR MOST IMPORTANT CHOICE in life, according to Epictetus, is whether to concern ourselves with things external to us or things internal. Most people choose the former because they think harms and benefits come from outside themselves.

William Irvine

#11. Epictetus, the pagan philosopher, proved in his life the truth of his own words - "A man can be happy without wealth, without family, without office or honor, without health, without anything that the world seeks after.

Orison Swett Marden

#12. When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!'.

Epictetus

#13. Persist and resist". Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. - Epictetus

Ryan Holiday

#14. It is not so much what happens to you as how you think about what happens.
Epictetus

Epictetus

#15. If you wish to be a writer; write!
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Epictetus (50-120) Greek philosopher.

Epictetus

#16. Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won't be able to fulfill.

William B. Irvine

#17. Epictetus, a Greek philosopher, once wrote, Circumstances do not make the man. They merely reveal him to himself.

Brian Tracy

#18. Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. - EPICTETUS

Jonathan Haidt

#19. Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that "all things everywhere are perishable.

William B. Irvine

#20. You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

Marcus Aurelius

#21. 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. - Epictetus

Karen Marie Moning

#22. In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. - EPICTETUS

Ryan Holiday

#23. which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!" - EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.15.13 W

Ryan Holiday

#24. It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows," Epictetus says.

Ryan Holiday

#25. I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people.

Leo Tolstoy

#26. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#27. As Epictetus says, Men are not influenced by things, but by their thoughts about things.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#28. A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse." - Epictetus.

Marcus Aurelius

#29. A poor soul burdened with a corpse,' Epictetus calls you.

Marcus Aurelius

#30. No thefts of free will reported."[ - Epictetus.]

Marcus Aurelius

#31. Epictetus, I think, said not to be concerned with death, because life is the presence of feeling and emotion and awareness, and death is the absence of all of that, which means you won't have any awareness. So why worry about it ?

Richard Schickel

#32. Epictetus say that everything has two handles, one by which it can be borne and one which it cannot. If your brother sins against you, he says, don't take hold of it by the wrong he did you but by the fact that he's your brother. That's how it can be borne.

Anne Tyler

#33. The Greek philosopher Epictetus recognised this two thousand years ago when he wrote: 'What disturbs and alarms man are not the things but his opinions and fancies about the things.

Robert Harris

#34. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Laini Taylor

#35. Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee. ~ Epictetus

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#36. You are a little soul carrying a dead body, as Epictetus said.

Epictetus

#37. Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.

Epictetus

#38. If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.

Epictetus

#39. Is then the fruit of a fig-tree not perfect suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily?

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#40. Only consider at what price you sell your own will: if for no other reason, at least for this, that you sell it not for a small sum.

Epictetus

#41. If you seek Truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found Truth, you need not fear being defeated.

Epictetus

#42. Happiness is an equivalent for all troublesome things.

Epictetus

#43. The soul that companies with virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught, sweet, rich and generous of its store, that injures not, neither destroys.

Epictetus

#44. When one maintains his proper attitude in life, he does not long after externals.

Epictetus

#45. All religions must be tolerated ... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

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#46. We can't control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.

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#47. 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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#48. The pleasure which we most rarely experience gives us greatest delight.

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#49. In banquets remember that you entertain two guests, body and soul: and whatever you shall have given to the body you soon eject: but what you shall have given to the soul, you keep always.

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#50. You're not yet Socrates, but you can still live as if you want to be him.

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#51. If they are wise, do not quarrel with them; if they are fools, ignore them.

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#52. Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives to them.

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#53. There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.

Epictetus

#54. Common and vulgar people ascribe all ills that they feel to others; people of little wisdom ascribe to themselves; people of much wisdom, to no one.

Epictetus

#55. We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.

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#56. To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported.

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#57. Choose the life that is noblest, for custom can make it sweet to thee.

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#58. you're unable to make someone change his views, recognize that he is a child, and clap as he does. Or if you don't care to act in such a way, you have only to keep quiet.

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#59. Make it your business to draw out the best in others by being an exemplar yourself.

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#60. If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you. Therefore, when anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgment of the incident that provokes you. -

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#61. Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

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#62. He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

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#63. Don't put your purpose in one place and expect to see progress made somewhere else.

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#64. 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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#65. It were no slight attainment could we merely fulfil what the nature of man implies.

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#66. 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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#67. I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.

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#68. Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.

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#69. No man is disturbed by things, but by his opinion about things.

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#70. When we act pugnaciously, and injuriously, and angrily, and rudely, to what level have we degenerated? To the level of the wild beasts. Well, the fact is that some of us are wild beasts of a larger size, while others are little animals, malignant and petty.

Epictetus

#71. Who, then, is the invincible human being? One who can be disconcerted by nothing that lies outside the sphere of choice.

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#72. It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Epictetus

#73. If you wish it, you are free; if you wish it, you'll find fault with no one, you'll cast blame on no one, and everything that comes about will do so in accordance with your own will and that of God.

Epictetus

#74. Don't be concerned with other people's impressions of you. They are dazzled and deluded by appearances. Stick with your purpose. This alone will strengthen your will and give your life coherence.

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#75. Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

Epictetus

#76. If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

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#77. People with a strong physical constitution can tolerate extremes of hot and cold; people of strong mental health can handle anger, grief, joy and the other emotions.

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#78. Everything has two handles,-one by which it may be borne; another by which it cannot.

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#79. Protect what belongs to you at all costs; don't desire what belongs to another.

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#80. In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught;but in life there are many things to draw us aside.

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#81. The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.

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#82. There is but one way to tranquility of mind and happiness, and that is to account no external things thine own, but to commit all to God.

Epictetus

#83. Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but
eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation.

Epictetus

#84. Avoid banquets which are given by strangers an ignorant persons. But if there is ever occasion to join them, let your attention be carefully fixed, that you slip not into the manner of the vulgar (the uninstructed).

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#85. Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinion about the things.

Epictetus

#86. A ship should not be held by a single anchor; neither should life depend upon a single hope.

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#87. 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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#88. Think of God more often than thou breathest.

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#89. No one who is in a state of fear or sorrow or tension is free, but whosoever is delivered from sorrows or fears or anxieties is at the same time delivered from servitude.

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#90. Whatever your mission, stick by it as if it were a law and you would be committing sacrilege to betray it. Pay no attention to whatever people might say; this no longer should influence you.

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#91. Don't seek that all that comes about should come about as you wish, but wish that everything that comes about should come about just as it does, and then you'll have a calm and happy life.

Epictetus

#92. And have you not received faculties which will enable you to bear all that happens to you? Have you not received greatness of spirit? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?

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#93. Many people who have progressively lowered their personal standards in an attempt to win social acceptance and life's comforts bitterly resent those of philosophical bent who refuse to compromise their spiritual ideals and who seek to better themselves.

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#94. It is better to advise than upbraid, for the one corrects the erring; the other only convicts them.

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#95. To get or not to get what we desire can be equally disappointing.

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#96. 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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#97. Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition.

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#98. Resistance is vain in any case; it only leads to useless struggle while inviting grief and sorrow.

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#99. Nothing is in reality either pleasant or unpleasant by nature but all things become so through habit

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#100. If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, for the pleasure of any one, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be contented, then, in everything, with being a philosopher; and if you with to seem so likewise to any one, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

Epictetus