Ryan Pertusio > Ryan's Quotes

“If someone tried to take control of your body and make you a slave, you would fight for freedom. Yet how easily you hand over your mind to anyone who insults you. When you dwell on their words and let them dominate your thoughts, you make them your master.”
― Epictetus, The Manual: A Philosopher's Guide to Life

“The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

“Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

“Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may
hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
― Epictetus

“Sickness is a problem for the body, not the mind — unless the mind decides that it is a problem. Lameness, too, is the body's problem, not the mind's. Say this to yourself whatever the circumstance and you will find without fail that the problem pertains to something else, not to you.”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

“Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”
― Epictetus

“Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness”
― Epictetus

“A ship should not ride on a single anchor, nor life on a single
hope”
― Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

“Demand not that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.”
― Epictetus, The Discourses

“Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.”
― Epictetus

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
― Epictetus

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
― Epictetus

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”
― Epictetus

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
― Epictetus

“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse”
― Epictetus