Unlimited Quote Collections
Organize your favorite quotes without limits. Create themed collections for every occasion with Premium.
Tradition has it that late in life Epictetus retired from teaching introduction and withdrew to the peace and quiet of family life, under conditions … - Epictetus
" "Tradition has it that late in life Epictetus retired from teaching introduction and withdrew to the peace and quiet of family life, under conditions imposed by old age: that is, he became a parent by adopting rather than fathering a child, and took into his home a female servant to serve as a kind of surrogate mother to the child and domestic servant for himself. That he had absented himself from family life for so long shows that he regarded philosophy as a jealous mistress who demanded practically all his time and attention, which family life would not allow. That this renunciation of family life represented a real sacrifice is suggested by the fact that he took to it immediately upon retiring. He evidently thought he had earned the comforts of home after devoting most of his life to improving the lives of others – the successive generations of students who had passed through his school. We have no more news of Epictetus beyond this. After creating this version of a family he was evidently content to settle into it and live out the balance of his years in obscurity.
English
Collect this quote
About Epictetus
Epictetus (c. 55 – c. 135 AD), born a slave, was a Greek Stoic philosopher. His words were recorded by his student Arrian in the Discourses and Enchiridion written in the early 2nd-century.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
ΕΠΙΚΤΗΤΟΣ
Alternative Names:
Epictetus of Hierapolis
•
Epiktetos
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Epictetus
Good introduced human beings to be students of himself and his works, and not merely students but also interpreters of these things. It is wrong, therefore, for us to begin and end where the nonrational animals do. We should rather begin where they do but end where nature has ended in our case. Nature ended at studying and paying attention to things and a way of life in harmony with itself. See to it then, that you do not die without having studied these things.
It is possible to learn the will of nature from the things in which we do not differ from each other. For example, when someone else's little slave boy breaks his cup we are ready to say, “It's one of those things that just happen.” Certainly, then, when your own cup is broken you should be just the way you were when the other person's was broken. Transfer the same idea to larger matters. Someone else's child is dead, or his wife. There is no one would not say, “It's the lot of a human being.” But when one's own dies, immediately it is, “Alas! Poor me!” But we should have remembered how we feel when we hear of the same thing about others.
Loading...