Epictetus Quotes

Do not desire anything that is not your own, because nothing is your own that is not up to you to procure or to secure whenever you want. Keep your hands right off it, but first and foremost keep your desire well away. Otherwise you are giving yourself up to slavery and submitting your neck to the yoke, if ever you admire what is not your own and feel strongly for things that are dependent on others and are perishable.

A fool cannot be convinced or even compelled to renounce his folly.

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.

Keep in mind that what injures you is not people who are rude or agressive but your opinion that they are injuring you. So whenever someone provokes you, be aware that the provocation really comes from your own judgment. Start, then, by trying not to get carried away by the impression. Once you pause and give yourself time, you will more easily control yourself.

Will you never come to a realisation of who you are, what you have been born for and the purpose for which the gift of vision was made in our case?

For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free.

¿Cómo se lo que va a pasar? Mi tarea es utilizar lo que ocurra con diligencia y habilidad.

the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.

Why are you pestering me, pal? My own evils are enough for me.

Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path

In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions

It is better to die poor, while free from fear and grief, than to live surrounded by riches and filled with anxiety.

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.

"But to be hanged—is that not unendurable?" Even so, when a man feels that it is reasonable, he goes off and hangs himself.