Jo S > Jo's Quotes

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
― 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

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

“Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

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

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

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”
― Epictetus (From Manual 51)

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

“Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”
― Epictetus

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

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

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”
― Epictetus, Enchiridion

“To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”
― Epictetus

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

“I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.”
― Epictetus

“First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”
― Epictetus

“Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”
― Epictetus

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ”
― Epictetus

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
― Epictetus

“Do not try to seem wise to others. ”
― Epictetus

“If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.”
― Epictetus

“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

“You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he should appear at Nero's shows, taking part in the performance himself, Agrippinus replied, 'Appear by all means.' And when Florus inquired, 'But why do not you appear?' he answered, 'Because I do not even consider the question.' For the man who has once stooped to consider such questions, and to reckon up the value of external things, is not far from forgetting what manner of man he is.”
― Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

“Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.”
― Epictetus

“Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent. ”
― Epictetus

“If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.”
― Epictetus

“It is not so much what happens to you as how you think about what happens.”
― Epictetus

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch