Epictetus Quotes: 175 Quotes for Timeless Wisdom on Self-Reflection, Truth, and Living with True Freedom

“Ask me, if you choose, if a Cynic shall engage in the administration of a state.”

Epictetus

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: Ask me, if you choose, if a Cynic shall engage in the administration of a state.... Ask you if a man shall come forward in the Athenian assembly and talk about revenues and supplies, when his business is to converse with all men, Athenians, Corinthians, and Romans alike, not about supplies, not about revenue, not yet peace and war, but about Happiness and Misery, Prosperity and Adversity, Slavery and Freedom?... what greater government shall he hold than he holds already? (117).

“I apply to you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what deserves your attention most is the last thing to gain it; that you know not good from evil, and are”

Epictetus

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: I apply to you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what deserves your attention most is the last thing to gain it; that you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless wretch; a fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher affect you thus, speaker and speech are alike dead. (120).

Evil

“Others may fence themselves with walls and houses”

Epictetus

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: Others may fence themselves with walls and houses, when they do such deeds as these, and wrap themselves in darkness—aye, they have many a device to hide themselves. Another may shut his door and station one before his chamber to say, if any comes, He has gone forth! he is not at leisure! But the true Cynic will have none of these things; instead of them, he must wrap himself in Modesty: else he will but bring himself to shame, naked and under the open sky. That is his house; that is his door; that is the slave that guards his chamber; that is his darkness! (111).

Housing

“Appearances to the mind are of four kinds.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 27.
Discourses
Context: Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

Appearance

“A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole.”

Epictetus

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole. One has a shoulder out of joint, another an abscess: a third suffers from an issue, a forth pains in the head. And am I then to sit down and treat you to pretty sentiments and empty fluourishes, so that you may applaud me and depart, with neither shoulder, nor head, nor issue, nor abscess a whit the better for your visit? Is it then for this that young men are to quit their homes, and leave parents, friends, kinsmen and substance to mouth out Bravo to your empty phrases! (121).

Pain , Pleasure , School

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.”

Epictetus

1
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

“Appear to know only this,—never to fail nor fall.”

Epictetus

That Courage is not inconsistent with Caution, book ii. Chap. i.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it; for, if you don't act right, shun the action itself; but, if you do, why are you afraid of those who censure you wrongly?”

Epictetus

35
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

World

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 26.
Discourses

Life , Drawing

“If the room is smoky, if only moderately, I will stay; if there is too much smoke I will go. Remember this, keep a firm hold on it, the door is always open.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 25.
Discourses

“If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls? And if our souls are bound up and in contact with God, as being very parts and fragments plucked from Himself, shall He not feel every movement of theirs as though it were His own, and belonging to His own nature?”

Epictetus

36
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

God , Feeling , Soul , Nature

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

Epictetus

Book II, ch. 18.
Discourses

Reading

“Piety towards the Gods, be sure, consists chiefly in thinking rightly concerning them—that they are, and that they govern the Universe with goodness and justice; and that thou thyself art appointed to obey them, and to submit under all circumstances that arise; acquiescing cheerfully in whatever may happen, sure that it is brought to pass and accomplished by the most Perfect Understanding. Thus thou wilt never find fault with the Gods, nor charge them with neglecting thee.”

Epictetus

163
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

God , Justice , Art , Understanding

“The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.”

Epictetus

That we ought not to be angry with Mankind, Chap. xxviii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“It is difficulties that show what men are.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 24.
Discourses

Men

“If a Cynic is an object of pity, he seems a mere beggar; all turn away, all are offended at him. Nor should be be slovenly of look, so as not to scare men from him in this way either; on the contrary, his very roughness should be clean and attractive.”

Epictetus

118
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Men , Way

“Think of God more often than thou breathest.”

Epictetus

Fragment xix.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

God , Thinking

“If thou rememberest that God standeth by to behold and visit all that thou doest; whether in the body or in the soul, thou surely wilt not err in any prayer or deed; and thou shalt have God to dwell with thee.”

Epictetus

Fragment xxiv.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

God , Soul

“The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.”

Epictetus

Of Courage, Chap. xxix.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Evil

“Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions,—as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.”

Epictetus

How the Semblances of Things are to be combated, Chap. xviii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 6.
Discourses

Death , Pain

“For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.”

Epictetus

Book II, ch. 1 http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.2.two.html
Discourses
Variant: For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.

Hurtful , Death , Pain , Fear

“There are some things which men confess with ease, and others with difficulty.”

Epictetus

Of Inconsistency, Chap. xxi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men

“If what philosophers say of the kinship of God and Men be true, what remains for men to do but as Socrates did: never, when asked one’s country, to answer, 'I am an Athenian or a Corinthian,' but 'I am a citizen of the world.”

Epictetus

15
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Men , God , World , Country

“Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 16.
Discourses

Parting

“Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them. Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the highest improvements and follow the distinctions of reason? You have received the philosophical theorems, with which you ought to be familiar, and you have been familiar with them. What other master, then, do you wait for, to throw upon that the delay of reforming yourself?… Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.”

Epictetus

50
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

Law , Thinking , Appearance , Waiting

“You have not stirred my spirit. For what can I see in you to stir me, as a spirited horse will stir a judge of horses? Your body? That you maltreat. Your dress? That is luxurious. Your behavior, your look?—Nothing whatsoever.”

Epictetus

81
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Behavior , Horse

“Freedom is the name of virtue: Slavery, of vice…. None is a slave whose acts are free.”

Epictetus

Fragment x.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Freedom

“Of pleasures, those which occur most rarely give the most delight.”

Epictetus

Fragment xi.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Pleasure

“Who is there whom bright and agreeable children do not attract to play and creep and prattle with them?”

Epictetus

Concerning a Person whom he treated with Disregard, Chap. xxiv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Children

“Two principles we should always have ready — that there is nothing good or evil save in the will; and that we are not to lead events, but to follow them.”

Epictetus

Book III, ch. 10.
Discourses

Evil

“Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.”

Epictetus

15
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

Life , Children , Waiting , Wealth

“Have this thought ever present with thee, when thou losest any outward thing, what thou gainest in its stead; and if this be the more precious, say not, I have suffered loss.”

Epictetus

27
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Suffering , Loss

“You are a little soul, carrying a corpse.”

Epictetus

Fragment xxvi.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Soul

“When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many things!”

Epictetus

35
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

God , Fish

“It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.”

Epictetus

5
tr. George Long (1888)
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

“For what constitutes a child?—Ignorance. What constitutes a child?—Want of instruction; for they are our equals so far as their degree of knowledge permits.”

Epictetus

That Courage is not inconsistent with Caution, book ii. Chap. i.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Knowledge

“The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the use of moral theorems, such as, "We ought not to lie;" the second is that of demonstrations, such as, "What is the origin of our obligation not to lie;" the third gives strength and articulation to the other two, such as, "What is the origin of this is a demonstration." For what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction? What truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the account of the second, and the second on the account of the first. But the most necessary, and that whereon we ought to rest, is the first. But we act just on the contrary. For we spend all our time on the third topic, and employ all our diligence about that, and entirely neglect the first.”

Epictetus

51
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

Truth , Lie , Time

“Kings and tyrants have armed guards wherewith to chastise certain persons, though they be themselves evil. But to the Cynic conscience gives this power—not arms and guards.”

Epictetus

119
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Evil , Personality

“Give me by all means the shorter and nobler life, instead of one that is longer but of less account!”

Epictetus

Fragment ix.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Life

“If what the philosophers say be true,—that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain,—so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.”

Epictetus

Book I, ch. 18.
Discourses

Men

“To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.”

Epictetus

Variant translation: To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported.
Book I, ch. 2.
Discourses