The Best Epictetus Quotes

Epictetus was a Greek philosopher during the 1st and early 2nd centuries C.E. He was a strong advocate of Stoic ethics and was renowned for his consistent and powerful ethical thought as well as his effective methods of teaching.

He was mainly concerned with self-management, integrity, and personal freedom. He would advocate those requirements to his students by requiring them to thoroughly examine two central ideas: “volition” and the correct use of impressions.

Epictetus had a profound influence on the moralistic tradition, beyond that, he is an important philosopher in his own right.

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Born around the 50s C.E. in Hierapolis, Epictetus spent a major time of his life as the slave of Epaphroditus, who was an administrator in the court of Nero. Epictetus studied for a time under Musonius Rufus, a Roman senator and Stoic philosopher. Eventually, he received his freedom and started lecturing on his own until he was forced to leave the city when Domitian banned philosphers. Epictetus then established his own school in Greece and stayed there teaching until his death.

The majority of Epictetus’s teaching is compiled in a four-volume work referred to as the Discourses. According to the preface, they were ghostwritten by the essayist and historian Arrian of Nicomedia in order to convey the personal impact of his instruction. A shorter book called Encheiridion (Manual or Handbook) is a brief summary of the Discourses.

Epictetus sustains that the foundation of all philosophy is self-knowledge. Indeed, the first subject of our study should be the conviction of our ignorance and gullibility. Logic allows us to have a valid reasoning and certainty in judgment. One of the most necessary part of philosophy should be the application of the doctrine, for example, people should not lie. The second should be the reasons, and that comes from the logic part.

One should also know what is in our power and what is not. For example, our opinions, desires, impulses and aversions are all in our power. Our bodies, glory, possessions and power are not in our power.

Knowing what is good and what is not good is made by what he calls prohairesis, or the capacity for choice. It allows us to act and gives us the freedom that only rational animals have.

The entire philosophy of Epictetus revolves around what it means to be a human being or rather, a rational mortal creature. The term rational describes human being that can “use impressions” in a reflective manner. We, as do animals, use these impressions in that our behaviour is guided by what we perceive the circumstances to be.

More stoic quotes from Epictetus to reflect on

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.

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

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.

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

Control thy passions lest they take vengeance on thee.

If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

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

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

I am not Eternity, but a human being—a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass!

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.

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.

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?

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words.

Only the educated are free.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.

If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both played a poor figure in that, and neglected one that is within your powers.

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.

It is difficulties that show what men are.

A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

To you, all you have seems small: to me, all I have seems great. Your desire is insatiable, mine is satisfied. See children thrusting their hands into a narrow-necked jar, and striving to pull out the nuts and figs it contains: if they fill the hand, they cannot pull it out again, and then they fall to tears.— ‘Let go a few of them, and then you can draw out the rest!’—You, too, let your desire go! covet not many things, and you will obtain.

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

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.

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

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

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

Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.

No thing 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.

A ship should not ride on a single anchor, nor life on a single hope.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.

If you seek Truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found Truth, you need not fear being defeated.

I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?

Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, don’t lay hold on the action by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be carried; but by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it, as it is to be carried.

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.”

These reasonings are unconnected: “I am richer than you, therefore I am better”; “I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better.” The connection is rather this: “I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;” “I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours.” But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

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

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.

Thou shalt not blame or flatter any.

Wherever a man is against his will, that to him is a prison.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance.

Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.

Don’t seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.