Epicurus Quotes

58 Sourced Quotes

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Epicurus
Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

Epicurus
Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

Epicurus
Natural wealth is limited and easily obtained; the wealth defined by vain fancies is always beyond reach.

Epicurus
What will happen to me if that which this desire seeks is achieved, and what if it is not?

Epicurus
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
Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void.

Epicurus
When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the profligate or that which depends on physical enjoyment--as some think who do not understand our teachings, disagree with them, or give them an evil interpretation--but by pleasure we mean the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety.

Epicurus
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
Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity.

Epicurus
The honor paid to a wise man is a great good for those who honor him.

Epicurus
Most men are in a coma when they are at rest and mad when they act.

Epicurus
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Epicurus
It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Epicurus
Remember that the future is neither ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither count on it as sure to come nor abandon hope of it as certain not to be.

Epicurus
No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.

Epicurus
He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

Epicurus
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Epicurus
The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life.

Epicurus
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
In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns most.

Epicurus
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
Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.

Epicurus
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
Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are death is not come, and when death is come, we are not.

Epicurus