Top 500 Epictetus Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “No, I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it – or do I have to die moaning and groaning too?”

— Epictetus

352. “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

353. “Happiness is an equivalent for all troublesome things.”

— Epictetus

354. “To adorn our characters by the charm of an amiable nature shows at once a lover of beauty and a lover of man.”

— Epictetus

355. “Do nothing in a depressed mood, nor as one afflicted, nor as thinking that you are in misery, for no one compels you to that.”

— Epictetus

356. “The soul is unwillingly deprived of truth.”

— Epictetus

357. “Is it not the same distance to God everywhere?”

— Epictetus

358. “The knowledge of what is mine and what is not mine, what I can and cannot do. I must die. But must I die bawling? I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?”

— Epictetus

359. “When one maintains his proper attitude in life, he does not long after externals.”

— Epictetus

360. “Watch yourself as you go about your daily business and later reflect on what you saw, trying to identify the sources of distress in your life and thinking about how to avoid that distress.”

— Epictetus

361. “So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.”

— Epictetus

362. “I have learned to see that whatever comes about is nothing to me if it lies beyond the sphere of choice.”

— Epictetus

363. “If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.”

— Epictetus

364. “Bid a singer in a chorus, Know Thyself; and will he not turn for the knowledge to the others, his fellows in the chorus, and to his harmony with them?”

— Epictetus

365. “We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.”

— Epictetus

366. “What is it that every man seeks? To be secure, to be happy, to do what he pleases without restraint and without compulsion.”

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

368. “For sheep don’t throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk.”

— Epictetus

369. “Try to enjoy the great festival of life with other men!”

— Epictetus

370. “As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new.”

— Epictetus

371. “If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.”

— Epictetus

372. “Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?”

— Epictetus

373. “These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor even to speak of himself or his own merits.”

— Epictetus

374. “The good or ill of a man lies within his own will.”

— Epictetus

375. “It is better to starve to death in a calm and confident state of mind than to live anxiously amidst abundance. And.”

— Epictetus

376. “Ask not that events should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should happen that you will have peace.”

— Epictetus

377. “Don’t be prideful with any excellence that is not your own.”

— Epictetus

378. “Whenever externals are more important to you than your own integrity, then be prepared to serve them the remainder of your life.”

— Epictetus

379. “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

380. “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to.”

— Epictetus

381. “Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?”

— Epictetus

382. “Liars are the cause of all the sins and crimes in the world.”

— Epictetus

383. “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

384. “What is death? A scary mask. Take it off-see, it doesn’t bite.”

— Epictetus

385. “Those who are well constituted in the body endure both heat and cold: and so those who are well constituted in the soul endure both anger and grief and excessive joy and the other affects.”

— Epictetus

386. “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

387. “Whoever then would be free, let him wish for nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.”

— Epictetus

388. “Don’t put your purpose in one place and expect to see progress made somewhere else.”

— Epictetus

389. “Seek not for events to happen as you wish but rather wish for events to happen as they do and your life will go smoothly.”

— Epictetus

390. “If you wish it, you are free; if you wish it, you’ll find fault with no one, you’ll cast blame on no one, and everything that comes about will do so in accordance with your own will and that of God.”

— Epictetus

391. “Those proficient praise no one, blame no one, and accuse no one. They say nothing concerning their self as being anybody or knowing anything.”

— Epictetus

392. “Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes and figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe. So if the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to maturity instantly or in an hour, how do you expect the human mind to come to fruition, so quickly and easily?”

— Epictetus

393. “A vulgar man, in any ill that happens to him, blames others; a novice in philosophy blames himself; and a philosopher blames neither, the one nor the other.”

— Epictetus

394. “Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor what they seem to be. They are what they are.”

— Epictetus

395. “For 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!”

— Epictetus

396. “Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men.”

— Epictetus

397. “When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, ‘if Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.’”

— Epictetus

398. “Behold the birth of tragedy: when idiots come face to face with the vicissitudes of life.”

— Epictetus

399. “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.”

— Epictetus

400. “There is only one thing for which God has sent me into the world, and that is to develop every kind of virtue or strength, and there is nothing in all the world that I cannot use for this purpose.”

— Epictetus