Show that you know this only—how you may never either fail to get what you desire or fall into what you avoid.
Epictetus
50 – 135
Stoicism
A Greek Stoic philosopher born into slavery who rose to become one of the most influential thinkers of antiquity. His teachings, recorded by his pupil Arrian in the Discourses and the Enchiridion, centre on the distinction between what is in our power and what is not.
For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free.
For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. For where a child has knowledge, he is no worse than we are.
For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.
For what is lacking now is not quibbles; nay, the books of the Stoics are full of quibbles
The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.
For human beings, the measure of every action is the impression of the senses.
Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.
In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.
"If the room is smoky, if only moderately, I will stay; if there is too much smoke I will go. Remember this, keep a firm hold on it, the door is always open."
If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled?
It is difficulties that show what men are.
If it is my interest to have a farm, it is my interest to take it away from my neighbour; if it is my interest to have a cloak, it is my interest also to steal it from a bath. This is the source of wars, seditions, tyrannies, plots.
Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these about whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.
If what the philosophers say be true,—that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain,—so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.
Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.
Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.
Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.
No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?
Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.
In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.
Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly within our own control.
"But to be hanged—is that not unendurable?" Even so, when a man feels that it is reasonable, he goes off and hangs himself.
To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.