Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.” “Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. “He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.” “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” “First say to yourself what you would be and then do what you have to do.” “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems” They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.” Books are the training weights of the mind. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” “If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.” Here is a brief collection of some of my favorite quotes from a man who didn’t just teach philosophy, he lived it. I think we should all strive to be a Socrates. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.” That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.įrom now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. One of his most famous excerpts that I love referring back to says: It’s a concept not unlike density in physics: two objects of the same size can have two completely different weights.Įpictetus believed that philosophy wasn’t something you taught, but yet a way of living. I’ve always held Epictetus in high regard because I’ve always believed that the value of the advice a person gives is directly proportional to the life they have lived.įor instance, would you rather take business advice from a trust fund baby who inherited a corporation or the guy who built an empire out of nothing? Sure, they both may have excellent points to what they are saying, but the advice from the guy who went from rags to riches carries more weight in my opinion. In 93AD, the current emperor of Rome banished all philosophers from the city and so Epictetus went to northern Greece where he lived out the rest of his life. Sometime around 68AD, Epictetus was granted his freedom and began teaching philosophy as a free man. He was granted permission to study philosophy by his master, and as he did so, he gained notoriety, even as a slave. He was born a slave and went to Rome as a boy where he was the servant to a wealthy master. Epictetus lived a hard life, even by ancient standards. I’ve put together collections of quotes from Aristotleand Plato, but one of my favorite philosophers has always been Epictetus. Throughout my life, I’ve always loved the Greek philosophers.
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