Famous Quotes

Quotes by Epictetus

• Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
• First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
• Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
• Freedom is the right to live as we wish.
• God has entrusted me with myself.
• If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
• If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.
• Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
• Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
• It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.
• It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
• It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
• Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
• Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
• Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.
• No great thing is created suddenly.
• No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
• 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.
• Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
• Only the educated are free.
• The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
• The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
• There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
• To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
• Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.
• We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.
• We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.
• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
• When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.