Quotes from Epictetus

Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing? ... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling that desire.

Ruin and recovery are both from within.

Nature has given to men one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor even to speak of himself or his own merits.

Wisdom means understanding without any doubt that circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they may. People behave as they will.

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.

He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.

Common and vulgar people ascribe all ills that they feel to others; people of little wisdom ascribe to themselves; people of much wisdom, to no one.

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

From now on practice saying to everything that appears unpleasant: You are merely an appearance and NOT what you appear to be.

Silence is safer than speech.

No man is able to make progress when he is wavering between opposite things.

God has made all men to be happy.

Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.

Man should have an intuition of this far-reaching cosmic purpose and then, if he takes care to see that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things, the difficulties of earthly existence will not destroy his peace of mind.

Men are not troubled by things themselves, but by their thoughts about them

Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.

It is difficulties that show what men are.