Ben Logan > Ben's Quotes

“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

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
― 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

“First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.”
― Epictetus

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
― Epictetus

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

“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

“Τίς εἶναι θέλεις, σαυτῷ πρῶτον εἰπέ: εἶθ' οὕτως ποίει ἃ ποιεῖς. (First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.)”
― Epictetus, The Discourses

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
― 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

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

“Only the educated are free.”
― Epictetus

“Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”
― 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

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

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

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
― 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

“Seek not the good in external things;seek it in yourselves.”
― Epictetus

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid