Epictetus Quotes
The good or ill of a man lies within his own will.
God has entrusted me with myself.
Freedom is the right to live as we wish.
First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent.
When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit give it nothing which may tend to its increase.
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
The will of nature is to be learned out of things
in which we do not differ from each other.
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?
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone.
It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.
It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not your own; nothing to grow to you that may give you agony when it is torn away.
What prison? Where he is already: for he is there against his will; and wherever a man is against his will, that to him is a prison.
He who is free in the body, but bound in the soul is a slave; but on the contrary he who is bound in the body, but free in the soul, is truly free.
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.
Don’t let outward appearances mislead you into thinking that someone with more prestige, power or some other distinction must on that account be happy.
If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosopher who say that only the educated are free.
What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always and approach toward it.
It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.
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.