Quotes from Epictetus

Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.

If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.

Lucky is the man who dies at work.

you are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

First to those universal principles I have spoken of: these you must keep at command, and without them neither sleep nor rise, drink nor eat nor deal with men: the principle that no one can control another's will, and that the will alone is the sphere of good and evil.

We must consider what is the time for singing, what the time for play, and in whose presence: what will be unsuited to the occasion; whether our companions are to despise us, or we to despise ourselves: when to jest, and whom to mock at: and on what occasion to be conciliatory and to whom: in a word, how one ought to maintain one's character in society. Wherever you swerve from any of these principles, you suffer loss at once; not loss from without, but issuing from the very act itself.

Never say of anything that I've lost it, only that Ive given it back.

Tis true I know what evil I shall do but passion overpowers the better council.

of all things, the greatest, and most important, and most all-embracing, is this society in which human beings and God are associated together. From this are derived the generative forces to which not only my father and grandfather owe their origin, but also all beings that are born and grow on the earth, and especially rational beings, [5] since they alone are fitted by nature to enter into communion with the divine, being bound to God through reason.

For your part, do not adopt any air of superiority. Mind your own business, keep busy with the work you are best suited for, and play well the part the Author has given you.

At feasts, remember that you are entertaining two guests, body and soul. What you give to the body, you presently lose; what you give to the soul, you keep for ever.

greatness of reason is measured not by height or length, but by the quality of its judgements.