Epictetus - Golden Sayings of Epictetus

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If thou wouldst make progress, be content to seem foolish and void of understanding with respect to outward things. Care not to be thought to know anything. If any should make account of thee, distrust thyself.

Epictetus
Does a Philosopher apply to people to come and hear him? does he not rather, of his own nature, attract those that will be benefited by him—like the sun that warms, and the food that sustains them?

Epictetus
Freedom is the name of virtue: Slavery, of vice…. None is a slave whose acts are free.

Epictetus
Exceed due measure, and the most delightful things become the least delightful.

Epictetus
If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.

Epictetus
Even as bad actors cannot sing alone, but only in chorus: so some cannot walk alone. Man, if thou art aught, strive to walk alone and hold converse with yourself, instead of skulking in the chorus! at length think; look around thee; bestir thyself, that thou mayest know who thou art!

Epictetus
If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls? And if our souls are bound up and in contact with God, as being very parts and fragments plucked from Himself, shall He not feel every movement of theirs as though it were His own, and belonging to His own nature?

Epictetus
In general, any methods of discipline applied to the body which tend to modify its desires or repulsions, are good—for ascetic ends. But if done for display, they betray at once a man who keeps an eye on outward show; who has an ulterior purpose, and is looking for spectators to shout, "Oh what a great man!" This is why Apollonius so well said: "If you are bent upon a little private discipline, wait till you are choking with heat one day—then take a mouthful of cold water, and spit it out again, and tell no man!"

Epictetus