Epictetus Quotes

365 quotes in 3065 categories

• Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to choose, unless that is your choice. Lameness is a hindrance to the…
• Never look for your work in one place and your progress in another.
• If you have assumed a character above your strength, you have both acted in this matter in an unbecoming way, and you have neglected that…
• Remember that you are in actor in a play of such a kind that the author chooses...For this is your duty, to act well the…
• Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. Once you have determined the spiritual principles you wish to exemplify, abide by these…
• In theory it is easy to convince an ignorant person; in actual life, men not only object to offer themselves to be convinced, but hate…
• If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At…
• What will the world be quite overturned when you die?
• It's so simple really: If you say you're going to do something, do it. If you start something, finish it.
• Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a…
• It is a mark of a mean capacity to spend much time on the things which concern the body, such as much exercise, much eating,…
• We can't control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.
• What is learned without pleasure is forgotten without remorse.
• It is your own convictions which compels you; that is, choice compels choice.
• Avoid banquets which are given by strangers an ignorant persons. But if there is ever occasion to join them, let your attention be carefully fixed,…
• Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power…
• What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.
• The soul that companies with virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught, sweet, rich and generous of its…
• No man is able to make progress when he is wavering between opposite things.
• Confident because of our caution

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