Quotes About Epictetus

well as the others, namely, the faculty of reason. Reason is unique among the faculties assigned

Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.

Where Epictetus advised testing the value of things by asking whether they are in our power, Chrysippus recommended the following two questions: Is there good or bad at hand? Is it appropriate to react? For a Stoic, the answer to the first question would be yes only if it refers to our virtue. Otherwise it would always be no, because nothing external to us is truly good or bad. It follows that the answer to the second question would also be no, it is not appropriate to react.

You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

A poor soul burdened with a corpse,' Epictetus calls you.

Don't bind yourself, with the chains of desire and fear, to things that are outside your sphere of control. This is a matter of sanity." —Epictetus

Thou art a poor soul, saddled with a corpse," said Epictetus.

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

Torn between violence and disillusionment, I seem to myself a terrorist who, going out in the street to perpetrate some outrage, stops on the way to consult Ecclesiastes or Epictetus.

Reading Epictetus, I realized that most of the pain in my life came not from any actual privations or insults but, rather, from the shame of thinking that they could have been avoided.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable but everything reasonable may be supported.

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

The universal aspect of Stoicism is illustrated by the fact that Epictetus, a former slave, was influential on the Stoic reflections of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180).

It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.

The manner in which Epictetus , Montaigne , and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

realize that by "philosophers" Epictetus doesn't mean professional academics (trust me, you don't want to make a habit of socializing mostly with them), but rather people who are interested in following virtue and cultivating their character.

Epictetus tells us that regret is a waste of our emotional energy. We cannot change the past—it is outside of our control. We can, and should, learn from it, but the only situations we can do something about are those happening here and now.

Epictetus suggests that those who fall into circumstances they wish to avoid are those who suffer misfortune, by which he means that much suffering comes from a disconnect between what you want to happen and what actually happens. Or, as the Stoics would say, what is in accordance to nature as opposed to contrary to nature.