Top 500 Epictetus Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Try to enjoy the great festival of life with other men!”

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

353. “In banquets remember that you entertain two guests, body and soul: and whatever you shall have given to the body you soon eject: but what you shall have given to the soul, you keep always.”

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

355. “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

356. “Envy is the antagonist of the fortunate.”

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

358. “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

359. “Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.”

— Epictetus

360. “It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them.”

— Epictetus

361. “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

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

— Epictetus

363. “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

364. “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

365. “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

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

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

368. “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”

— Epictetus

369. “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

370. “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

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

— Epictetus

372. “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

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

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

— Epictetus

378. “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

379. “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

380. “What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.”

— Epictetus

381. “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

382. “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

383. “You will never have to experience defeat if you avoid contests whose outcome is outside your control.”

— Epictetus

384. “The materials are indifferent, but the use we make of them is not a matter of indifference.”

— Epictetus

385. “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

386. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”

— Epictetus

387. “It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

— Epictetus

388. “If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled?”

— Epictetus

389. “It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body; for it is better to die than to live badly.”

— Epictetus

390. “The philosopher’s lecture room is a ‘hospital’: you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain; for you are not in good condition when you arrive.”

— Epictetus

391. “I have a bad neighbour – bad, that is, for himself. For me, though, he is good: he exercises my powers of fairness and sociability.”

— Epictetus

392. “No one is ever unhappy because of someone else.”

— Epictetus

393. “There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings – arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.”

— Epictetus

394. “When the idea of any pleasure strikes your imagination, make a just computation between the duration of the pleasure and that of the repentance that is likely to follow it.”

— Epictetus

395. “As you travel the path of philosophy, be content to be considered plain or even foolish. Do not strive to be celebrated for anything. If you are praised by others, be skeptical of yourself. For it it is no easy feat to hold onto your inner harmony while collecting accolades. When grasping for one, you are likely to drop the other.”

— Epictetus

396. “In short, we do not abandon any discipline for despair of ever being the best in it.”

— Epictetus

397. “Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions, as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.”

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

399. “Death is not dreadful or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates.”

— Epictetus

400. “For you will learn by experience that it’s true: the things that men admire and work so hard to get prove useless to them once they’re theirs.”

— Epictetus