“So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously, What overwhelms people when they are about to leaves friends, family, old haunts and their accustomed way of life? Thoughts.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Remember from now on whenever something tends to make you unhappy, draw on this principle: 'This is no misfortune; but bearing with it bravely is a blessing.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Sickness is a problem for the body, not the mind — unless the mind decides that it is a problem. Lameness, too, is the body's problem, not the mind's. Say this to yourself whatever the circumstance and you will find without fail that the problem pertains to something else, not to you.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“We are at the mercy of whoever wields authority over the things we either desire or detest. If you would be free, then, do not wish to have, or avoid, things that other people control, because then you must serve as their slave.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day – especially death – and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“The gods do not exists, and even if they exist they do not trouble themselves about people, and we have nothing in common with them. The piety and devotion to the gods that the majority of people invoke is a lie devised by swindlers and con men and, if you can believe it, by legislators, to keep criminals in line by putting the fear of God into them.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“It is a universal law — have no illusion — that every creature alive is attached to nothing so much as to its own self-interest.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“There is no shame in making an honest effort.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“People with a strong physical constitution can tolerate extremes of hot and cold; people of strong mental health can handle anger, grief, joy and the other emotions.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Whenever anyone criticizes or wrongs you, remember that they are only doing or saying what they think is right. They cannot be guided by your views, only their own; so if their views are wrong, they are the ones who suffer insofar as they are misguided.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Protect what belongs to you at all costs; don't desire what belongs to another.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you don't like doing something, make a habit of doing something different.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“In literature, too, it is not great achievement to memorize what you have read while not formulating an opinion of your own.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Adopt new habits yourself: consolidate your principles by putting them into practice.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“For where you find unrest, grief, fear, frustrated desire, failed aversion, jealousy and envy, happiness has no room for admittance. And where values are false, these passions inevitably follow.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Tell yourself what you want to be, then act your part accordingly.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Free is the person who lives as he wishes and cannot be coerced, impeded or compelled, whose impulses cannot be thwarted, who always gets what he desires and never has to experience what he would rather avoid.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Freedom is not archived by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“You should be especially careful when associating with one of your former friends or acquaintances not to sink to their level; otherwise you will lose yourself. If you are troubled by the idea that ‘He’ll think I’m boring and won’t treat me the way he used to,’ remember that everything comes at a price. It isn’t possible to change your behavior and still be the same person you were before.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Never praise or blame people on common grounds; look to their judgements exclusively. Because that is the determining factor, which makes everyone's actions either good or bad.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, with discipline and detachment.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Don't put your purpose in one place and expect to see progress made somewhere else.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“You ought to realize, you take up very little space in the world as a whole—your body, that is; in reason, however, you yield to no one, not even to the gods, because reason is not measured in size but sense. So why not care for that side of you, where you and the gods are equals?”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“That is the way things are weighed and disagreements settled — when standards are established. Philosophy aims to test and set such standards. And the wise man is advised to make use of their findings right way.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Most people are impulsive, however, and having committed to the thing, they persist, just making more confusion for themselves and others until it all end in mutual recrimination.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“He wants what he cannot have, and does not want what he can't refuse — and isn't aware of it. He doesn't know the difference between his own possessions and others'. Because, if he did, he would never be thwarted of disappointed.
Or nervous.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“We aren't filled with fear except by things that are bad; and not by them, either, as long as it is in our power to avoid them.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“Don't concern yourself with other people's business. It's his problem if he receives you badly. And you cannot suffer for another person's fault. So don't worry about the behavior of other.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
Epictetus
Born place: Pamukkale (formerly Hierapolis, Phrygia), Turkey
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“Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out."
"Yes, sir," Andrews said.
"Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old."
"No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is."
"You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . .”
― John Williams, quote from Butcher's Crossing
“No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.”
― quote from The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
“There are two types of people in this world. People who hate clowns...and clowns. -Bobby Pendragon”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Quillan Games
“When the French high command had got wind of the German Schlieffen Plan prior to World War I, their reaction had been, “So much the better for us!” That assault had barely ground to a halt outside Paris. In 1940, the same high command had greeted initial news of another German attack with smiles—and that attack had ended at the Spanish border. The problem was that people tended to wed their ideas more faithfully than their spouses, and the tendency was universal. It”
― Tom Clancy, quote from Executive Orders
“And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. Now that was a thought made me shudder to the bone. I wondered if it were true, and if it were, what would happen when some deity bent out of true by mortal ambition returned to set the record straight.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Justice
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