Phillip > Phillip's Quotes

“It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”
― Diogenes

“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.”
― Diogenes

“It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.”
― Diogenes

“Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“No man is hurt but by himself”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.”
― Diogenes

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
― Seneca

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Seneca

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
― Seneca

“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms -- you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
― Seneca

“No man was ever wise by chance”
― Seneca

“He who is brave is free”
― Seneca

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

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

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

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

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

“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)

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

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