Quotes from Epictetus

sophistical questions, so we ought to exercise ourselves

If you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one, until it is wiped out altogether.

reflection will show that people are put off by nothing so much as what they think is unreasonable, and attracted to nothing more than what to them seems reasonable.

So why not care for that side of you, where you and the gods are equals?

I'm in difficulty, lord, and pitiable: no one cares about me, no one helps me; I'm the object of universal scorn.' [49] Is that the witness you are going to bear, making a mockery of God's summons, when he honoured you and judged you worthy to be his public spokesman?

But standards of reasonableness and unreasonableness vary from one person to the next – just as we consider different things good or bad, harmful or beneficial. [6] Which is why education has no goal more important than bringing our preconception of what is reasonable and unreasonable in alignment with nature.

No one has power over our principles, and what other people do control we don't care about.

Cómo se llama a los que hacen caso de cualquier apariencia? — Locos

A man asked me to write to Rome on his behalf who, as most people thought, had met with misfortune; for having been before wealthy and distinguished, he had afterwards lost all and was living here. So I wrote about him in a humble style. He however on reading the letter returned it to me, with the words: I asked for your help, not for your pity. No evil has happened unto me.

Desire to become pure, and, once pure, you will be at ease with yourself, and comfortable in the company of God.

At a feast, taking the largest helping may be good for your appetite, but sharing generously is good for the spirit of the celebration. In this case, honoring your hosts and fellow guests should be valued above sating your hunger.

True instruction is this:--to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole.

You are the one who knows yourself – which is to say, you know how much you are worth in your own estimation, and therefore at what price you will sell yourself; because people sell themselves at different rates.

They made you responsible only for what is in your power – the proper use of impressions.

So why take on the burden of matters which you cannot answer for? You are only making unnecessary problems for yourself.

Don't let the force of the impression when first it hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, 'Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent.

If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.

But what says Socrates?—One man finds pleasure in improving his land, another his horses. My pleasure lies in seeing that I myself grow better day by day.

And as proof that he has delivered them to you, bring your preconceptions to bear. Bring the arguments of philosophers. Bring what you've often heard, and often said yourself; what you've read, and what you've practised.

Cilv?ks necieš no notikumiem, bet gan no to interpret?cijas. (Epikt?ts, 50–135.g.)

So – a true philosopher is under no obligation to respect vulgar opinion as to what is religious or irreligious, what is just or unjust. What dishonour he brings on philosophers in general if he did! That's not what you learned here.

So when we are frustrated, angry or unhappy, never hold anyone except ourselves – that is, our judgements – accountable.

A guide, on finding a man who has lost his way, brings him back to the right path - he does not mock and jeer at him and then take himself off. You also must show the unlearned man the truth, and you will see that he will follow. But so long as you do not show it to him, you should not mock, but rather feel your own incapacity.

Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.