Epictetus Quotes
Best 26 Discourses Quotes by Epictetus
Discourses Quotes
“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.”
“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.”
“Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.”
“Even as the sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the sun.”
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
“For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.”
“I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?”
“If virtue promises good fortune and tranquility and happiness, certainly also the progress towards virtue is progress towards each of these things.”
“It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.”
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”
“It’s as if I were to say to an athlete, ‘Show me your shoulders,’ and he responded with, ‘Have a look at my weights.’ ‘Get out of here with your gigantic weights!’ I’d say, ‘What I want to see isn’t your weights but how you’ve profited from using them.”
“Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
“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.”
“No great thing 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.”
“Of pleasures, those which occur most rarely give the most delight.”
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“Exceed your expectations on a daily basis.”
“Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition.”
“Practice yourself, for heaven's sake; in little things; and thence proceed to greater.”
“Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? "What sinews are those?" — A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised, careful resolutions; unerring decisions.”
“The rational and the irrational appear such in a different way to different persons, just as the good and the bad, the profitable and the unprofitable.”
“To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.”
“We must make the best use that we can of the things which are in our power, and use the rest according to their nature.”
“We should enjoy good fortune while we have it, like the fruits of autumn.”
“Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.”
“When one maintains his proper attitude in life, he does not long after externals.”
“You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower.”
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“If you only desire to be your best (to live with virtue) and if you only avoid moral mistakes (called vice), then you can always succeed because these are things that you control.”
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