This is the list of Epictetus quotes used in the text in my blog. Born a slave, he became a great source of inspiration for one of the most well-known and best Roman Emperors. Although he never wrote anything himself, one of his students, Arrian, made sure to take extensive notes. He created the Discourses and the Handbook from which most of these quotes come. Through these works, they continue to inspire and teach us even now, 2000 years later. When reading quotes online, make sure that they are real. There are many false quotes roaming the different platforms. Gregory Sadler started a YouTube series where he looks into them. Check his video on Aristotle here.
We see more quotes by Marcus Aurelius or Seneca pass our screen, but Epictetus deserves more attention. This list hopes to bring his wisdom to the general public, feel free to use it. A link as a reference to this page would be greatly appreciated. These are all taken from The Discourses and the Handbook, the Everyman version. But the references should still work for many other versions. Enjoy the list and I hope you’ll get something out of it.
The list of Epictetus quotes starts below and new ones will be added as I add more writing. Check out the reflections on the Discourses here.
“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is our own action. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever is not our action.”
Epictetus, The handbook of Epictetus, 1
Post: On What we Control, How Externals Crush Who we Are, How to Be a Stoic
“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is our own action. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever is not our action. The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered and unimpeded; but those that are not up to us are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own.”
Epictetus, The handbook of Epictetus, 1
Post: What is Stoicism
“If you intend to engage in any activity, remind yourself what the nature of the activity is. If you are going to bathe, imagine yourself what happens in baths: the splashing of water, the crowding, the scolding, the stealing. And like that, you will more steadily engage in the activity if you frankly say ‘I want the bathe and want to hold my will in accordance with nature.”
Epictetus, The Handbook of Epictetus, 4
Post: On Dealing with the General Public
“What harm is there while you are kissing your child to say softly, ‘Tomorrow you will die’.”
Epictetus, the Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 24.87
Post: On Dealing With Loss, What is Stoicism
“Enable my mind to adapt itself to whatever comes to pass.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 2.21
Post: What is Stoicism
“Above all, keep a close watch on this – that you are never so tied to your former acquainances and friends that you are pulled down to their level. If you don’t, you’ll be ruined. You must choose whether to be loved by these friends and remain the same person, or to become a better person at the cost of those friends… if you try to have it both ways you will neither make progress nor keep what you once had.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Chapter 2
Post: Friendship and Growth Through a Stoic Lens
“First say to yourself, what manner of man you want to be; when you have settled this, act upon it in all you do.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 23.1
Post: How to Know Yourself
“Difficulties are the things that show what men are.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 24.1
Post: How our Mirror Fails to Reflect
“For it is you who know yourself, and what value you set upon yourself, and at what rate you sell yourself.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 2.11
Post: How our Mirror Fails to Reflect
“You should drop your desire; do not covey many things, and you will get what you want.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 9.22
Post: Budgeting like a Stoic: How to save more money
“If it ever happens that you turn to external things in the desire to please some other person, realize that you ahe ruined your scheme of life. Be content, then, with being a philosopher in everything; and if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself that you are one, and you will be able to achieve it.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 23
Post; The Collective Existential Crisis
“If you take on a role that is beyond your powers, you not only disgrace yourself in that role, but you neglect the role that you were capable of fulfilling.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 37
Post: How to Find your Purpose Through Stoicism, How to Deal With the Imposter Syndrome Through Stoicism, How to Increase your Self-Awareness
“Examine who you are… For you are capable of understanding the divine governance of the universe, and of reasoning on what follows from that.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 10
Post: How to Find your Purpose Through Stoicism
“When you are about to undertake some action, remind yourself what sort of action it is.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 4
Post: How to Act Like a Stoic
“Practice, then, from the start to say to every harsh impression, ‘You are an impression, and not at all the thing you appear to be.’ Then examine it and test it by these rules which you have, and firstly, and chielfy, by this: Whether the impression has to do with things which are up to us, or those which are not, and, if it has to do with thing that are not up to us, be ready to reply. ‘It is nothing to me’.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 1
Post: How to deal with your emotions
“But it is a much finer thing to be happy, to have a peaceful and undisturbed mind, to have what concerns you dependent on nobody but yourself.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 4, Chapter 4.36
Post: How to Be Alone
“In a similar way, you too should remind yourself that what you love is mortal, that what you love is not your own. It is granted to you for the present while, and not irrevocably, nor for ever, but like a fig or a bunch of grapes in the appointed season; and if you long for it in the winter, you are a fool.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 24.86
Post: How to Love
“In the case of everything that delights the mind, or is useful, or is loved with fond affection, remember to tell yourself what sort of things it is, beginning with the least of things. If you are fond of a jug, say, ‘It is a jug that I am fond of’; then, if it is broken, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say to yourself that it is a human being that you are kissing; and then you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 3
Post: How to Love
“What a man sets his heart on, that he naturally loves. Do men set their heart on evils? – By no means. Or on what does not concern them? – No again. It remains for us to conclude, then, that good things alone are what they set their heart on: and if they set their heart on those, they love them too. Whoever, therefore, has knowledge of good things would also know how to love them; and he who cannot distinguish good things from evil, and things that are neither good nor evil from both of these, how could he still have power to love? It follows that the wise man alone has the power to love.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 22.1
Post: How to Love
“For universally (and you should not be deceived on this) every living creature is attached to nothing so strongly as it is to its own interest.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book Two, Chapter 22.12
Post: What is True Friendship
“Eteocles: ‘Where will you stand before the walls?’
Polyneices: ‘For what reason do you ask me?’
Eteocles: ‘I mean to face you and slay you.’
Polyneices: ‘And so is my desire too.’”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book Two, Chapter 22.12
Post: What is True Friendship
“…you have not been invited to such a person’s banquet, because you have not paid him the price for which a meal is sold. It is sold for praise; it is sold for attention. Make up the price, then, if that is to your advantage. But if you would at the same time not pay the one and yet receive the other, you are greedy and stupid. Have you nothing, then, in place of the meal? Yes, indeed, you have: that of not praising someone you did not want to praise, and of not putting up with the people around his door.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 25
Post: What is True Friendship
“Philosophers exhort us not to be contented with mere learning, but to add practice also, and then training.”
Epictetus, the Discourses, book two, chapter 9.13
Post: The Stoic Reading List for Beginners
“Besides: do you think that I fall into evil voluntarily, and miss the good? Heaven forbid. What, then, is the cause of my going wrong? Ignorance.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1.26
Post: How to Forgive Like a Stoic
“For you will find that it is in reality true, that these things which are eagerly pursued and admired are of no use to those who have gained them; while those who have not yet gained them imagine that, once these things are theirs, they will possess all that is good, and then, when they are theirs, there is the same scorching heat, the same agitation, the same nausea and the same desire of what they do not have. For freedom is not secured by the fulfilment of people’s desires, but by the suppression of desire.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 4.1, 174, 175
Post: What is Success: A Stoic View
“Only consider at what price you sell your own will and choice, man: if for nothing else, that you may not sell it cheap.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 2.33
Post: How to Respect your Character
“It starts with knowing yourself, and what value you set upon yourself.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 2.11
Post: How to Respect your Character
“For as soon as a person even considers such questions, comparing and calculating the values of external things, he draws close to those who have lost all sense of their proper character.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 2.12
Post: How to Respect your Character
“You will do your part, and I mine: It is yours to kill, and mine to die without trembling.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 2.19
Post: How to Respect your Character
“To a rational creature, only what is contrary to reason is unendurable: but everything rational he can endure.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 2.1
Post: How to Respect your Character
“The Reasoning Faculty; for that alone of the faculties that we have received comprehends both itself – what it is, what it is capable of, and with what valuable powers it has come to us- and all the other faculties likewise.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1 Chapter 1.4
Post: What is Our Reasoning Faculty
“To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1 Chapter 1.17
Post: What is Our Reasoning Faculty
“We choose instead to take care of many, and to encumber ourselves with many; body, property, brother, friend, child, and slave.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 1.14
Post: What is Our Reasoning Faculty
“What, then, should we have at hand upon such occasions? Why, what else than to know what is mine, and what is not mine, what is within my power, and what is not.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 1.21
Post: What is Our Reasoning Faculty
“Why do you not study to be contented with what is alloted to you?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 1.27
Post: What is Our Reasoning Faculty
“I must die. If instantly, I will die instantly; if in a short time, I will dine first, since the hour for dining is here, and when the time comes, then I will die. How? As becomes a person who is giving back what is not his to own.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 1.32
Post: What is Our Reasoning Faculty
“but since in our birth we have these two elements mingled within us, a body in common with the animals, and reason and intelligence with the gods, many of us incline towards the former kinship, miserable as it is and wholly mortal, and only some few to the divine and blessed one.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 3.3
Post: What is the Stoic God
“Those few who think they are born to fidelity, and honour, and a securely grounded use of their impressions, will harbour no abject or ignoble thought about themselves, whilst the multitude will think the opposite.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 3.4
Post: What is the Stoic God
“Look, then, and take care that you do not become one of these roguish creatures.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 3.8
Post: What is the Stoic God
“What does virtue achieve? Peace of Mind.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 4.5
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic
“Now if virtue promises happiness, an untroubled mind and serenity, then progress towards virtue is certainly progress towards each of these.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 4.3
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic
“Seek it in that place, wretch, where your task lies. And where does it lie?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 4.11
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic
“Do not ask things to happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go smoothly.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 8
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic, How to Manage Expectations Like a Stoic, Five Stoic Quotes to Change Your Life
“If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own faculty of choice, working at it and perfecting it, so as to bring it fully into harmony with nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unhindered, faithful, self-respecting.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 4.18
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic
“When he rises in the morning, he observes and keeps to these rules; bathes and eats as a man of fidelity and honour; and thus, in every matter that befalls, puts his guiding principles to work.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 4.20
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic
“It is the action of an uneducated person to lay the blame for his own bad condition upon others; of one who has made a start on his education to lay the blame on himself; and of one who is fully educated, to blame neither others nor himself.”
Epictetus, The Handbook, 5
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic, How to Deal with Rejection
“‘Take the treatise On Impulse, and see how thoroughly I have read it.’ That’s not what I am looking for, slave, but how you exercise your impulse to act and not to act, how you manage your desires and aversions, how you approach things, how you apply yourself to them, and prepare for the, and whether in harmony with nature or out of harmony. For if you are acting in harmony with nature, give me evidence of that, and I will say that you are making progress; but if you are acting out of harmony, go your way, and do not merely comment on these treatises, but even write such works yourself.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 4.14
Post: How to Make Progress Like a Stoic
“Most of us fear the deadening of the body… but the deadening of the soul concerns us not a bit.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 5.4
Post: How to Save the Soul
“Is there no difference, then, between that impression and the other? – ‘None.’ – Can I argue with this man any longer?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 5.6-7
Post: How to Save the Soul
“Such petrification takes two forms: the one, a petrification of the understanding, and the other of the sense of shame when a person has obstinately set himself neither to assent to evident truths nor to abandon the defence of contradiction.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 5.3
Post: How to Save the Soul
“One man does not see the contradiction; he is in a bad state. Another does see it, but he is not moved, nor does he improve; he is in an even worse state.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 5.8
Post: How to Save the Soul
“He is aware of it, but pretends that he is not; he is even worse than a corpse.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 5.7
Post: How to Save the Soul
“We might be fluent in the classroom but drag us out into practice and we’re miserably shipwrecked.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 16.20 (Paraphrased)
Page: The Discourses of Epictetus
“For everything that happens in the universe one can readily find reason to praise providence, if one has within oneself these two qualities, the ability to see each particular event in the context of the whole, and a sense of gratitude.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, On Providence, Book 1, Chapter 6.1
Post: How to View the World
“For if we do not act in a proper and orderly manner, and each of us in accordance with his nature and constitution, we shall no longer attain our end.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 6.15
Post: How to View the World
“It is therefore shameful that man should begin and end where irrational creatures do. He ought rather to begin there, but to end where nature itself has fixed our end: and that is in the contemplation and understanding and a way of life in harmony with nature.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 6.20
Post: How to View the World
“Have you not received faculties which give you the power to endure everything that happens?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 6.28
Post: How to View the World
“Bring on me now, O Zeus, whatever difficulty you will, for I have the means and the resources granted to me by yourself to bring honour to myself through whatever may come to pass.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 6.37
Post: How to View the World
“But God has introduced man into the world as a spectator of himself and of his works; and not only as a spectator, but an interpreter of them.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 6.19
Post: How to View the World
“Yet I undertake to show you that you have the equipment and resources for greatness of soul and a courageous spirit: you show me what occasion you have for complaint and reproach!”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 6.43
Post: How to View the World
“For what we seek in every matter is how the virtuous man may find the path he should follow and the way he should behave with regard to it.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7.2
Post: How to Find the Truth
“For what is required in reasoning? To establish what is true, to reject what is false, and to suspend judgement in doubtful cases.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7.5
Post: How to Find the Truth
“Therefore, in reasoning too, mere speech is not enough, but it is necessary that we should become able to test and distinguish between the true and the false and the doubtful? It is necessary.
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7.8
Post: How to Find the Truth
“This is the very thing that I myself said to Rufus, when he reproved me for not finding the single missing step in some syllogism. Why, said I, have I burned down the Capitol then? Slave, answered he, what was missed out here is the Capitol!”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7.32
Post: How to Find the Truth
“And is it no fault to treat the impressions presented to our minds in a random, senseless and haphazard manner, and to be unable to follow an argument, a demonstration or a sophism, in short, to be unable to see in question and answer what is in accordance with one’s own position and what is not – is there no fault in any of these?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7.33
Post: How to Find the Truth
“For in general every faculty is dangerous to weak and uninstructed persons, as being apt to render them presumptuous and vain.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 8.8
Post: Why We Need Virtue to Make Progress
“For by what method can one persuade a young man who excels in these kinds of study that he ought not to be an appendage to them, but they to him.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 8.9
Post: Why We Need Virtue to Make Progress
“Will you not perceive and distinguish what are the things that make men philosophers, and what belong to them on other accounts?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 8.14
Post: Why We Need Virtue to Make Progress
“What then? Do I reject these faculties? By no means. For neither do I reject the faculty of seeing. Nevertheless if you ask me what is the good man, I can only reply to you that it consists in a certain disposition of our choice.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 8.14-16
Post: Why We Need Virtue to Make Progress
“When one is asked where one is from, never to say ‘I am an Athenian’, or ‘I am a Corinthian’, but rather ‘I am a citizen of the universe’?
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.1
Post: What we belong to
“For why do you say that you are an Athenian, and not a native of that corner on which your paltry body was thrown down at birth?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.2
Post: What we belong to
“Why should not a man who understands this call himself a citizen of the universe?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.6
Post: What we belong to
“Must he (the philosopher) be baser and more cowardly than the irrational beasts, each of which is self-sufficient, and lack neither its proper food nor the way of life appropriate to itself and its nature?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.9
Post: What we belong to
“Here thieves and robbers, and courts of law, and those who are called tyrants, are thought to have some power over us, because of our poor body and its possessions. Suffer us to show them, that they have power over nobody.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.15
Post: What we belong to
“My friends, wait for god, till he shall give the signal, and release you from his service; then depart to him. For the present, be content to remain in this place where he has stationed you.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.16
Post: What we belong to
“Stay. Do not depart without reason.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.17
Post: What we belong to
“Why should any one envy another?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.20
Post: What we belong to
“It is absurd for you to think that if your general had stationed me in any post, I ought to maintain and defend it, and choose to die a thousand times rather than desert it, but if god has assigned us to a certain place and way of life, we ought to desert that.” Socrates, by
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9.24
Post: What we belong to
“If we had applied ourselves as heartily to our own work as the old men at Rome do to their schemes, perhaps we too might have achieved something.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 10.1
Post: What We Should Devote Our Time To
“Is there any similarity, then, between receiving and reading a little petition from somebody such as this: ‘I beg you to allow me to export a little corn’; and this, ‘I beg you to learn from Chrysippus what the administration of the universe is, and what place a rational creature holds in it; and learn, too, who you are, and where your good and evil lies.’”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 10.10
Post: What We Should Devote Our Time To
“Are these things alike? Do they require an equal degree of application? And is it shameful to neglect the one as the other?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 10.11-12
Post: What We Should Devote Our Time To
“For, indeed, we old men, when we see young ones at play, are keen to join in that play ourselves. Far more so, then, if I saw them wide awake and keen to join us in our studies, should I be eager myself to join with them in serious work.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 10.13
Post: What We Should Devote Our Time To
“Do but convince me that you were acting naturally, and I will convince you that everything natural is right.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11.5
Post: On Our Judgment
“And where there is ignorance, there is likewise want of knowledge and instruction in essential matters.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11.14
Post: On Our Judgment
“So you, then, now that you are aware of this, will in future apply yourself to nothing other, and think of nothing other than how to discover the criterion of what is in accordance with nature, and to apply that in judging each particular case.”
Epictetus, Book 1, Chapter 11.15
Post: On Our Judgment
“Pray, if you were sick yourself, should you be willing to have your relatives, and children themselves and your wife, so very affectionate as to leave you alone and desolate?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11.25
Post: On Our Judgment
“From this day forward, then, whenever we do anything wrong we will ascribe the blame only to the judgment from which we act; and we will endeavor to remove and extirpate that, with greater care than we would abscesses and tumors from our body.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11.35
Post: On Our Judgment
“It is necessary for you to become a student, that creature which every one laughs at, if you really desire to make an examination of your judgments.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11.39
Post: On Our Judgment
“But this, as you are quite aware, is not the work of a single hour or day.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11.40
Post: On Our Judgment
“Concerning gods.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.1
Post: How to Be Content
“And there is a fifth group, to which both Socrates and Odysseus belonged, who say, ‘Not a move do I make unseen to thee.’”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.3
Post: How to Be Content
“For he is free for whom all things happen in accordance with his choice, and whom no one can restrain.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.9
Post: How to Be Content
“But I would have whatever appears to me to be right happen, however it comes to appear so.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.11
Post: How to Be Content
“But for me to desire at random, and for things to happen in accordance with such a desire, may be so far from a noble thing as to be, of all others, the most shameful.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.12
Post: How to Be Content
“Or otherwise there would be no purpose in knowing anything, if it were to be adapted to each person’s personal wishes.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.14
Post: How to Be Content
“By no means, but true instruction is this: learning to will that things happen as they do. And how do they happen? As the appointer of them has appointed.”
Epictetus, Book 1, Chapter 12.15
Post: How to Be Content
“Where he already is; for he is there against his will, and wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.23
Post: How to Be Content
“Socrates was not in prison, for he was willingly there.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.23
Post: How to Be Content
“Do you not know how very small a part you are compared to the whole? That is, as to the body, for as to reason you are neither worse nor less, than the gods.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.26
Post: How to Be Content
“For greatness of reason is not measured by length or height, but by its judgment.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.26
Post: How to Be Content
“For what, then, have you been made accountable? For that which alone is in your power, the proper use of your impressions.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 12.34
Post: How to Be Content
“If he eats as he ought and sensibly, and, one might say, with restraint and self-control, will he not also be eating in a manner acceptable to the gods?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 13.1
Post: How to Treat Others
“Then not to be angry, or lose your temper, is that not acceptable to the gods?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 13.2
Post: How to Treat Others
“Will you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus as his forebear and is born as a son of the same seed as you, and is of the same high descent?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 13.3
Post: How to Treat Others
“That it is to the earth, that it is to the pit, that it is to these wretched laws, the laws of the dead, and not to the laws of the gods that you are looking?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 13.5
Post: How to Treat Others
“Do you not think that all things are bound together in a unity?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 14.1
Post: How It Is All Connected
“Do you not think that things on earth feel the influence of what is in the heavens?”
Epictetus, The Discourse, Book 1, Chapter 14.2
Post: How It Is All Connected
“But if the plants and our bodies are so intimately bound to the universe and affected by its influences, must our souls not be much more so?
Epictetus, The Discourse, Book 1, Chapter 14.2
Post: How It Is All Connected
“Why, does any one tell you that you possess a power equal to Zeus?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 14.11
Post: How It Is All Connected
“He (Zeus) has assigned to each man a director, his own personal daemon.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 14.12
Post: How It Is All Connected
“Will you not swear your oath to god, who have received so many and such great favours, or if you have sworn, will you not abide by your oath?”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 14.15
Post: How It Is All Connected
“Never to disobey, never to accuse, never to find fault with anything that god has bestowed, never to do or suffer unwillingly and with a bad grace that is inevitable.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 14.16
Post: How It Is All Connected
“In every circumstance I will preserve the governing part in accord with nature.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 15.4
Post: What Does Philosophy Promise?
“Bring him to me, and I will tell him; but to you I have nothing to say about his anger.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 15.5
Post: What Does Philosophy Promise?
“No great thing comes into being all of a sudden.”
Epictetus. The Discourses. Book 1, Chapter 15.7
Post: What Does Philosophy Promise?
“Since they were not born for themselves, but for service, it would not have been beneficial to create them with these additional needs.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 16.2
Post: What We Are Born for
“Thus one little boy, with only a rod, can drive a flock.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 16.5
Post: What We Are Born for
“I am not thinking of great things for the moment, but the simple fact that milk is produced from grass, cheese from milk, and wool from skins.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 16.8
Post: What We Are Born for
“But come, let us leave aside the central works of nature. Let us contemplate what she does, as it were, by the way.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 16.9
Post: What We Are Born for
“But how noble this sign is, how becoming and dignified. How much finer than a cock’s comb, and more majestic than a lion’s mane!”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 16.13
Post: What We Are Born for
“Ought we not, as we are digging, or ploughing, or eating, to sing the hymn of praise to god?
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 16.16
Post: What We Are Born for
“Remember that it is not only a desire for riches and power that makes you abject and subservient to others, but also a desire for quiet and leisure, and travel and learning. For the value you place on an external object, whatever it may be, makes you subservient to another.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 4, Chapter 4.1
Post: Attachments: How to Find the Right Balance
“In short, then, remember this, that if you attach value to anything outside the sphere of choice, you destroy that choice.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 4, Chapter 4.23
Post: Attachments: How to Find the Right Balance
“Since it is reason that analyses and brings to completion all other things, reason itself should not be left unanalyzed.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.1
Post: How to Follow Reason
“Plainly, either by itself, or by something else.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.2
Post: How to Follow Reason
“The philosopher puts logic first, just as, when it comes to measuring grain, we begin by examining the measure.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.6
Post: How to Follow Reason
“It is enough that logic has the power to distinguish and examine all other things, and as one may say, measure and weigh them.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.10
Post: How to Follow Reason
“But what, then, is the admirable thing? To understand the will of nature.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.13
Post: How to Follow Reason
¨If he (Chrysippus) only interprets the will of nature, but does not follow it himself; how much less his interpreter.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.17
Post: How to Follow Reason
“‘But if a person inflicts the fear of death upon me’, someone says, ‘he compels me.’ No, it is not what is inflicted upon you that compels you, but your own judgment that it is better to do such and such a thing than to die. Here, again, you see it is your own judgment that compelled you – that is, choice compelled choice.”
Epictetus, The Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 17.25-26
Post: How to Follow Reason
