Quotes by Epictetus

It is not so much what happens to you as how you think about what happens.

For making a good voyage a pilot and wind are necessary: and for happiness, reason and art.

First say to yourself what you would be and then do what you have to do.

You only have to doze a moment, and all is lost. For ruin and salvation both have their source inside you.

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

It is much better to die of hunger unhindered by grief and fear than to live affluently beset with worry, dread, suspicion and unchecked desire.

A companion's crudeness is bound to rub off on the one he is with, no matter how refined that person may be.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

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

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.

Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness

No man is free who is not master of himself.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

It's not what happens to you that matters, but how you react to it.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one thing: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after we distinguish between the two that we can begin to find peace.

It is not that some things happen to us, but that we react to some things in a certain way.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.