Quotes from Epictetus

reconciliation. Remember that you are friends, you've known each for other a long time, and the relationship is worth keeping.

What is the product of virtue? Tranquillity.

When you are alone, you should call this tranquility and freedom and when you are with many you shouldn't call this a crowd, or trouble or uneasiness but festival and company and contentedly accept it.

But I want power and renown so that I may help other people," you say. What do you mean by "help"? Can you really give them happiness and satisfaction—things that are in their own spheres of power, not yours?

Take the example of a public speaker. He is confident that he has written a good speech, he has committed the thing to memory, and can deliver it smoothly. Still he agonizes, [6] because it's not enough for him to be competent, he also hungers for the crowd's approval.

As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations to be induced to rise, but immediately shines and is saluted by all: so do you also not wait for clappings of hands, and shouts and praise to be induced to do good, but be a doer of good voluntarily, and you will be beloved as much as the sun.

Ä°nsan?n zaten bildiÄŸini sand??? ÅŸeyi öÄŸrenmesi imkans?zd?r.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.

Stop judging the things that fate brings you as "good" or "evil"; only judge your own thoughts, desires, and actions as good or evil. If you suppose events to be good or evil in themselves, when life doesn't go as you wish you will inevitably blame the Author.

The whole point of learning is to live out the teachings.

With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it. If you see an attractive person, you will find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire. If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them.

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.

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

They may kill me, but they cannot hurt me. —Socrates

if you shall seem to some to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.

These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid anything which depends on others: if he does not observe this rule, he must be a slave.

We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.

Inner peace begins when we stop saying of things, "I have lost it" and instead say, "It has been returned to where it came from.

If you didn't learn these things in order to demonstrate them in practice, what did you learn them for?

If any one trusted your body to the first man he met, you would be indignant, but yet you trust your mind to the chance comer, and allow it to be disturbed and confounded if he revile you; are you not ashamed to do so?

These are not the circumstances that I want.' Is it up to you to choose them? You have been given that particular body, these particular parents and brothers, this particular social position and place to live. You come to me hoping that I can somehow change these circumstances for you, not even conscious of the assets that are already yours that make it possible to cope with any situation you face.

If anyone tells you that a certain person has spoken in a bad way about you, don't make excuses about what has been said, but answer: "He was ignorant of my other faults, otherwise he would have mentioned those also.

If you wish to become proficient in the art of living with wisdom, do you think that you can eat and drink to excess?