Top 180 Epicurus Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Fortune seldom troubles the wise man. Reason has controlled his greatest and most important affairs, controls them throughout his life, and will continue to control them.”

— Epicurus

152. “Contented poverty is an honorable estate.”

— Epicurus

153. “Injustice is not evil in itself, but only in the fear and apprehension that one will not escape those who have been set up to punish the offense.”

— Epicurus

154. “Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship.”

— Epicurus

155. “We must consider both the ultimate end and all clear sensory evidence, to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.”

— Epicurus

156. “We must laugh and philosophize and manage our households and look after our other affairs all at the same time, and never stop proclaiming the words of the true philosophy.”

— Epicurus

157. “The impassive soul disturbs neither itself nor others.”

— Epicurus

158. “Earthquakes may be brought about because wind is caught up in the earth, so the earth is dislocated in small masses and is continually shaken, and that causes it to sway.”

— Epicurus

159. “Therefore, foolish is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will cause pain when it arrives but because anticipation of it is painful.”

— Epicurus

160. “The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.”

— Epicurus

161. “It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul.”

— Epicurus

162. “I am grateful to blessed Nature, because she made what is necessary easy to acquire and what is hard to acquire unnecessary.”

— Epicurus

163. “Meditate then, on all these things, and on those things which are related to them, both day and night, and both alone and with like-minded companions. For if you will do this, you will never be disturbed while asleep or awake by imagined fears, but you will live like a god among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is in no respect like a mortal being.”

— Epicurus

164. “The conquest of fear, especially fear of unaccountable divine beings who meddle in nature at will, means a reduction in the sum total of human pain and suffering and opens the door to the calm acceptance of a new picture of the world – a world in which nature is autonomous and where there are ideal beings who never meddle.”

— Epicurus

165. “If death is we are not, if we are death is not.”

— Epicurus

166. “If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.”

— Epicurus

167. “Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man masters all these passions by means of reason.”

— Epicurus

168. “Pleasure and pain moreover supply the motives of desire and of avoidance, and the springs of conduct generally. This being so, it clearly follows that actions are right and praiseworthy only as being a means to the attainment of a life of pleasure. But that which is not itself a means to anything else, but to which all else is a means, is what the Greeks term the telos, the highest, ultimate or final Good.”

— Epicurus

169. “For a wrongdoer to be undetected is difficult; and for him to have confidence that his concealment will continue is impossible.”

— Epicurus

170. “As if they were our own handiwork we place a high value on our characters.”

— Epicurus

171. “Justice has no independent existence; it results from mutual contracts, and establishes itself wherever there is a mutual engagement to guard against doing or sustaining mutual injury.”

— Epicurus

172. “Without confidence, there is no friendship.”

— Epicurus

173. “Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink.”

— Epicurus

174. “Epicurus as a moral empiricist felt that our immediate feelings are far more cogent and authoritative guides to the good life than abstract maxims, verbal indoctrination, or even the voice of reason itself. Hence he based his ethics on nature, not on convention or on reason.”

— Epicurus

175. “Send me a pot of cheese, so that I may be able to indulge myself whenever I wish.”

— Epicurus

176. “The term “incorporeal” is properly applied only to the void, which cannot act or be acted on. Since the soul can act and be acted upon, it is corporeal.”

— Epicurus

177. “One who understands the limits of the good life knows that what eliminates the pains brought on by need and what makes the whole of life perfect is easily obtained, so that there is no need for enterprises that entail the struggle for success.19.”

— Epicurus

178. “Any device whatever by which one frees himself from the fear of others is a natural good.”

— Epicurus

179. “It is not possible for a man to banish all fear of the essential questions of life unless he understands the nature of the universe and unless he banishes all consideration that the fables told about the universe could be true. Therefore a man cannot enjoy full happiness, untroubled by turmoil, unless he acts to gain knowledge of the nature of things.”

— Epicurus

180. “Orang yang ingin hidup tenteram, jangan menimbulkan kegalauan bagi dirinya sendiri mau pun bagi orang lain.”

— Epicurus

181. “I write this not for the many, but for you; each of us is enough of an audience for the other.”

— Epicurus

182. “The esteem of others is outside our control; we must attend instead to healing ourselves.”

— Epicurus

183. “The just person enjoys. the greatest peace of mind, while the unjust is full of the utmost disquietude.”

— Epicurus