We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more. You don’t control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things off, and each of us dies without truly living.
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.
He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.
Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
― A Guide To Happiness
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.
Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
Why should I fear death?
If I am, then death is not.
If Death is, then I am not.
Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?
Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear.
Religious tyranny did domineer.
At length the mighty one of Greece
Began to assent the liberty of man.
You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.
Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
Never say that I have taken it, only that I have given it back.
The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.
If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.
I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. (Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo)
He who has peace of mind disturbs neither himself nor another.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.
Haec ego non multis (scribo), sed tibi: satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. I am writing this not to many, but to you: certainly we are a great enough audience for each other.
Don't fear the gods,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.
― The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia
Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.
Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are.
― Letter to Menoeceus
The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship; of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter and immortal one.
We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.
Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.
The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.
He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.
To eat and drink without a friend is to devour like the lion and the wolf.
It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.
Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.
The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?
The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.
All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help.
When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind. For it is not continuous drinkings and revelings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit.
He who least needs tomorrow, will most gladly greet tomorrow.
Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.
If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.
The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
The purpose of all knowledge, metaphysical as well as scientific, is to achieve what Epicurus called ataraxia, freedom from irrational fears and anxieties of all sorts—in brief, peace of mind.
― The Art of Happiness
Let no one delay the study of philosophy while young nor weary of it when old.
[A] right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.
Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness.
I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.
The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.
― Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings
I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.
Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, for the greatest is the possession of friendship.
It is not the pretended but the real pursuit of philosophy that is needed for we do not need the appearance of good health but to enjoy it in truth.
The most important consequence of self-sufficiency is freedom.
― The Art of Happiness
If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man.
If a little is not enough for you, nothing is.
What was most important in Epicurus’ philosophy of nature was the overall conviction that our life on this earth comes with no strings attached; that there is no Maker whose puppets we are; that there is no script for us to follow and be constrained by; that it is up to us to discover the real constraints which our own nature imposes on us.
― The Epicurus Reader
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.
Fools are tormented by the memory of former evils; wise men have the delight of renewing in grateful remembrance the blessings of the past. We have the power both to obliterate our misfortunes in an almost perpetual forgetfulness and to summon up pleasant and agreeable memories of our successes. But when we fix our mental vision closely on the events of the past, then sorrow or gladness ensues according as these were evil or good.
― Epicurus, Stoic Six Pack 3 - The Epicureans: On The Nature of Things, Letters and Principal Doctrines of Epicurus, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, The Garden of Epicurus and Stoics vs Epicureans
If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.
― Principal Doctrines
if a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquillity
― The Art of Happiness
The conquest of fear, especially fear of unaccountable divine beings who meddle in nature at will, means a reduction in the sum total of human pain and suffering and opens the door to the calm acceptance of a new picture of the world—a world in which nature is autonomous and where there are ideal beings who never meddle.
― The Art of Happiness
We must exercise ourselves in thte things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.
Contented poverty is an honorable estate.
We need to set our affections on one good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.
When you die, your mind will be gone even faster than your body.
With the Epicureans it was never science for the sake of science but always science for the sake of human happiness.
― The Art of Happiness
Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.
It is not possible for a man to banish all fear of the essential questions of life unless he understands the nature of the universe and unless he banishes all consideration that the fables told about the universe could be true. Therefore a man cannot enjoy full happiness, untroubled by turmoil, unless he acts to gain knowledge of the nature of things.
Meditate then, on all these things, and on those things which are related to them, both day and night, and both alone and with like-minded companions. For if you will do this, you will never be disturbed while asleep or awake by imagined fears, but you will live like a god among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is in no respect like a mortal being.
The man who says that all events are necessitated has no ground for critizing the man who says that not all events are necessitated. For according to him this is itself a necessitated event.
― Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings
If you summarily rule out any single sensation and do not make a distinction between the element of belief that is superimposed on a percept that awaits verification and what is actually present in sensation or in the feelings or some percept of the mind itself, you will cast doubt on all other sensations by your unfounded interpretation and consequently abandon all the criteria of truth. On the other hand, in cases of interpreted data, if you accept as true those that need verification as well as those that do not, you will still be in error, since the whole question at issue in every judgment of what is true or not true will be left intact.
― The Art of Happiness
Therefore, foolish is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will cause pain when it arrives but because anticipation of it is painful.
If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich.
The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others. It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength.
― The Art of Happiness
Two of Epicurus’s early influences, Democritus and Pyrrho, had actually journeyed all the way to what is now India, where they had encountered Buddhism in the schools of the gymnosophists
― The Art of Happiness
How unhappy are the lives of men! How purblind their hearts!
The opinions held by most people about the gods are not true conceptions of them but fallacious notions, according to which awful penalties are meted out to the evil and the greatest of blessings to the good.
The risings and settings of the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies may come about from the lighting up and quenching of their fires…; for nothing in our sensory experience runs counter to this hypothesis. Or the said effects may be caused by the emergence of these bodies from a point above the earth and again by the earth’s position in front of them; for nothing in our sensory experience is against this.45 Here two alternative explanations of risings and settings are offered; both are of equal value and equally true, since neither is contradicted by anything in our experience. On the contrary, we have all seen fires die down from lack of fuel, and lights obscured or blacked out by objects coming in front of them.
― The Art of Happiness
Live in obscurity.
Pleasure and pain moreover supply the motives of desire and of avoidance, and the springs of conduct generally. This being so, it clearly follows that actions are right and praiseworthy only as being a means to the attainment of a life of pleasure. But that which is not itself a means to anything else, but to which all else is a means, is what the Greeks term the telos, the highest, ultimate or final Good.
― Epicurus, Stoic Six Pack 3 - The Epicureans: On The Nature of Things, Letters and Principal Doctrines of Epicurus, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, The Garden of Epicurus and Stoics vs Epicureans
Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of firends.
― Principal Doctrines
Epicurus as a moral empiricist felt that our immediate feelings are far more cogent and authoritative guides to the good life than abstract maxims, verbal indoctrination, or even the voice of reason itself. Hence he based his ethics on nature, not on convention or on reason.
― The Art of Happiness
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man masters all these passions by means of reason.
― The Art of Happiness
If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquillity.41 In other words, a person who doubts his senses will either lose contact with the reality of the surrounding world, like the Skeptics, and become psychologically isolated and insecure, or he will fall prey, as do the religionists, to theological explanations which do not allay anxiety but foment it.
― The Art of Happiness
We must laugh and philosophize and manage our households and look after our other affairs all at the same time, and never stop proclaiming the words of the true philosophy.
― The Art of Happiness
I am grateful to blessed Nature, because she made what is necessary easy to acquire and what is hard to acquire unnecessary.
― The Epicurus Reader
The cry of the flesh bids us escape from hunger, thirst, and cold; for he who is free of these and expects to remain so might live in happiness even with Zeus.
― Vatican Sayings [Annotated]
This science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication, and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions;
― Epicurus, Stoic Six Pack 3 - The Epicureans: On The Nature of Things, Letters and Principal Doctrines of Epicurus, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, The Garden of Epicurus and Stoics vs Epicureans
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you have was once among the things you only hoped for.
So long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist.
Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.
If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.
One who understands the limits of the good life knows that what eliminates the pains brought on by need and what makes the whole of life perfect is easily obtained, so that there is no need for enterprises that entail the struggle for success.19
― The Art of Happiness
A free man cannot acquire many possessions, because this is no easy feat without becoming a hireling of mobs or dynasts. And yet he has a constant abundance of everything, and if he should chance to gain many possessions, he could easily portion them out so as to win his neighbors’ good will.
― The Art of Happiness
Unlike at the Academy or the Lyceum, women, some of them concubines and mistresses, as well as a few slaves, joined the conversation; further, many of the students here had arrived without academic credentials in mathematics or music, de rigueur for entry to the other Athenian schools of higher learning. Everyone in the Garden radiated earnestness and good cheer. The subject under discussion was happiness.
― The Art of Happiness
The impassive soul disturbs neither itself nor others.
― The Art of Happiness
Death means nothing to us.
― The Art of Happiness
86. [Our aim is] neither to achieve the impossible, even by force, nor to maintain a theory which is in all respects similar either to our discussions on the ways of life or to our clarifications of other questions in physics, such as the thesis that the totality [of things] consists of bodies and intangible nature, and that the elements are atomic, and all such things as are consistent with the phenomena in only one way. This
― The Epicurus Reader
All things are in flux.
― The Art of Happiness
Thus Epicurus also, when he designs to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind, at the same time makes use of that which he destroys.
For what does he say? ‘Be not deceived, men, nor be led astray, nor be mistaken: there is no natural fellowship among rational animals; believe me. But those who say otherwise, deceive you and seduce you by false reasons.’—What is this to you? Permit us to be deceived.
Will you fare worse, if all the rest of us are persuaded that there is a natural fellowship among us, and that it ought by all means to be preserved? Nay, it will be much better and safer for you.
Man, why do you trouble yourself about us? Why do you keep awake for us? Why do you light your lamp? Why do you rise early? Why do you write so many books, that no one of us may be deceived about the gods and believe that they take care of men; or that no one may suppose the nature of good to be other than pleasure?
For if this is so, lie down and sleep, and lead the life of a worm, of which you judged yourself worthy: eat and drink, and enjoy women, and ease yourself, and snore.
And what is it to you, how the rest shall think about these things, whether right or wrong? For what have we to do with you?
You take care of sheep because they supply us with wool and milk, and last of all with their flesh. Would it not be a desirable thing if men could be lulled and enchanted by the Stoics, and sleep and present themselves to you and to those like you to be shorn and milked?
For this you ought to say to your brother Epicureans: but ought you not to conceal it from others, and particularly before every thing to persuade them, that we are by nature adapted for fellowship, that temperance is a good thing; in order that all things may be secured for you?
Or ought we to maintain this fellowship with some and not with others? With whom then ought we to maintain it?
With such as on their part also maintain it, or with such as violate this fellowship?
And who violate it more than you who establish such doctrines?
What then was it that waked Epicurus from his sleepiness, and compelled him to write what he did write?
― The Discourses
Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship.
― The Art of Happiness
Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.
― The Art of Happiness