Fragments

1. From Arrian's Epictetus, against the man who held forth on substance.

What does it matter to me, he says, whether the things that exist are composed of atoms, or of indivisible parts, or of fire and earth? Is it not enough to learn the nature of good and evil, and the limits of desire and aversion, and likewise of impulse and refusal, and, using these as our standards, to manage the affairs of life — leaving alone those questions that are above us, which are perhaps beyond the grasp of the human mind, or which, even if one grants that they are most certainly graspable, are of no use once grasped? And must we not say that those who reckon such matters as necessary to the philosopher's account are making trouble for themselves over nothing? — Is then the precept at Delphi also superfluous, the "Know thyself"? — No, he says, that one is not. — What, then, is its force? If someone gave a dancer in a chorus the order to know himself, would he not heed the command by attending also to his fellow dancers and to keeping in harmony with them? — He would, he says. — And if it were given to a sailor? Or to a soldier? Does it seem to you, then, that man was made to be a creature on his own, or for fellowship? — For fellowship. — By whom? — By Nature. — What that Nature is, and how it governs the whole, and whether it exists or not — is it any longer necessary to busy ourselves with these things?

2. From Arrian's Epictetus.

The man who is vexed at what is present and given by fortune is a layman in the conduct of life; but the man who bears these things nobly, and reasons soundly about what comes of them, deserves to be reckoned a good man.

3. From the same.

All things obey the universe and serve it: earth and sea and sun and the rest of the stars, and the plants and animals of the earth. Our own body too obeys it, in sickness and in health, growing young and growing old and passing through its other changes, whenever the universe wills. It is reasonable, then, that the one thing which is within our power — that is, our judgment — should not, alone, set itself against it. For the universe is strong and mightier than we, and has taken better counsel for us, in governing us together with the whole. And besides this, opposition, joined to unreason and accomplishing nothing further, only makes us toil in vain and fall into pains and griefs.

4. From Rufus, out of Epictetus, On Friendship.

Of all that exists, some things God has placed within our power, and some not within our power. Within our power he placed the finest and most excellent thing, by which indeed he himself is happy — the use of impressions. For this, when it is done rightly, is freedom, an even flow of life, cheerfulness, steadfastness; and this is also justice and law and self-command and the whole of virtue. All the rest he made not to be within our power. We too, therefore, must side with God, and, dividing things in this same way, must lay claim by every means to what is within our power, but entrust what is not within our power to the universe; and whether it asks for our children, or our country, or our body, or anything whatever, gladly give it up.

5. From Rufus, out of Epictetus, On Friendship.

Who among us does not admire the deed of Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian? Blinded in one eye by one of his citizens, he received the young man from the people to punish as he himself pleased; yet he refrained from this, and instead educated him and made him a good man, and brought him forward into the theater. When the Lacedaemonians marveled, he said: "This man I received from you insolent and violent; I give him back to you fair-minded and a good citizen."

6. From Rufus, out of Epictetus, On Friendship.

But beyond all else, it is the work of Nature to bind together and fit our impulse to the impression of what is becoming and useful.

7. From the same.

To think that we shall be held in contempt by others unless we injure our worst enemies by every means — that belongs to men utterly base and senseless. For we say that a man is held contemptible insofar as he is unable to do harm; but he is far more truly held contemptible insofar as he is unable to do good.

8. From Rufus, out of Epictetus, On Friendship.

Such is the nature of the universe — it was, and is, and shall be — and it is not possible for the things that come to be to come about otherwise than as they now stand. And of this turning and change not only men have a share, and the other animals upon the earth, but the divine things too, and, by Zeus, the four elements themselves turn upward and downward and change: earth becomes water, and water air, and this in turn changes into ether; and the same manner of change runs from above to below. If a man tries to incline his mind toward these things and to persuade himself to accept willingly what is necessary, he will pass through life with great measure and harmony.

10. "Without doing, only as far as speaking."

"Man, where are you throwing it? Look first whether the vessel is clean. For if you pour these things into your conceit, they are lost; if it goes rotten, it has turned to urine, or vinegar, or something worse than these."

More in the Cynic vein: "Bear" and "forbear."

11. From Arrian's Hortatory Discourses.

When Archelaus sent for Socrates, meaning to make him rich, Socrates bade them carry back this answer: that "at Athens four quarts of barley meal may be had for an obol, and the springs run with water." For if what I have is not sufficient for me, still I am sufficient for it, and so it too is sufficient for me. Or do you not see that Polus acted the tyrant Oedipus no more sweetly or pleasingly than he did the wanderer and beggar at Colonus? Then shall the man of noble birth show himself worse than Polus, by not playing well every part that the divinity sets upon him? Will he not imitate Odysseus, who in his rags shone no less than in his thick purple cloak?

12. From Arrian.

There are some great-souled men who, gently and quietly and as it were without anger, do all the same things as those who are carried away by violent passion. We must guard, then, against the error of such men too, as being far worse than the anger of the man who strains himself in rage. For these last quickly have their fill of vengeance, but the others draw it out long, like men in a slow fever.

13. From the Memorabilia of Epictetus.

But I see, says someone, the noble and good perishing of hunger and cold. — And do you not see those who are not noble and good perishing of luxury and bragging and vulgarity? — But it is shameful to be fed at another's expense. — And who, you wretch, feeds himself out of himself, other than the universe? So whoever blames Providence because the wicked go unpunished, because they are strong and rich, acts much as if, when men had lost their eyes, he said they had gone unpunished because their nails were sound. For I say that virtue differs from vice far more than eyes differ from nails.

14. From the Memorabilia of Epictetus.

[. . .] bringing forward those austere philosophers who hold that pleasure is not according to nature, but supervenes upon the things that are according to nature — upon justice, self-command, freedom. Why then does the soul rejoice and grow calm over the goods of the body, which are the lesser ones, as Epicurus says, but takes no pleasure in its own goods, which are the greatest? And yet Nature has given me a sense of shame, and I blush deeply whenever I suppose I am saying something shameful. It is this very movement that will not let me set down pleasure as the good and the end of life.

15. From the Memorabilia of Epictetus.

At Rome the women have Plato's Republic in their hands, because he holds that wives should be held in common. For they fix their minds on the words, and not on the man's meaning — that he does not bid one man marry and dwell with one woman and then wishes wives to be held in common, but rather abolishes that kind of marriage and brings in another kind. And, in sum, men delight to furnish excuses for their own faults; whereas philosophy says that it is not fitting to stretch out so much as a finger without good reason.

16. From the Memorabilia of Epictetus.

One must know that it is not easy for a settled conviction to take hold in a man, unless day by day he says and hears the same things, and at the same time applies them to his life.

17. From Epictetus.

When we have been invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and if anyone should bid the host serve him fish or cakes, he would seem out of place. Yet in the universe we ask the gods for things they do not give, and that when there are many things they have already given us.

18. From the same.

They are charming, he said, the men who pride themselves on what is not within our power. "I," says one, "am better than you, for I have many estates, while you are pinched with hunger." Another says, "I am of consular rank." Another, "I am a procurator." Another, "I have curly hair." But horse does not say to horse, "I am better than you, for I possess much fodder and plenty of barley, and my bridles are of gold and my saddlecloths embroidered" — rather, "I am swifter than you." And every creature is better or worse by its own virtue or vice. Is man, then, the one creature that has no virtue of its own, so that we must look to hair and clothes and ancestors?

19. The sick are vexed at a physician who gives them no advice, and think they have been given up for lost by him. Why then should a man not be so disposed toward the philosopher, as to suppose he has been given up as past hope of ever becoming sensible, if the philosopher tells him nothing useful?

20. From the same.

Those whose bodies are in good condition endure both heat and cold; so too those whose souls are in good condition bear anger and grief and excessive joy and the other passions.

21. From Epictetus.

For this reason it is just to praise Agrippinus, that though he was a man of the highest worth he never praised himself, but blushed if anyone else praised him. This man, he said, was of such a kind that he would write a commendation of every hardship that befell him: if he had a fever, of the fever; if he was in disrepute, of disrepute; if he was exiled, of exile. And once, he said, when he was about to lunch, a man came to him with word that Nero ordered him into exile; and he replied: "Well then, we shall lunch at Aricia."

22. Agrippinus, when he was a governor, used to try to persuade those he condemned that it was fitting for them to be condemned. "For it is not as an enemy," he said, "nor as a robber that I cast my vote against them, but as a guardian and protector — just as the physician comforts the man he is cutting and persuades him to submit himself."

23. From Epictetus.

Wonderful is Nature, and, as Xenophon says, a lover of life. This body of ours, the most disagreeable and filthiest of all things, we cherish and tend; for if we had to tend our neighbor's body for just five days, we could not endure it. Consider what it is to rise at dawn and brush another man's teeth, and, after he has relieved some need, to wash those parts. Truly it is a wonder to love a thing for which we perform so many services every day. I stuff this sack here, then I empty it; what is more burdensome than this? But I must serve God. For this reason I stay and put up with washing this wretched little body, feeding it, sheltering it. And when I was younger it laid yet another command on me, and even so I bore with it. Why then will you not bear with it, when Nature, who gave us the body, takes it away? — I love it, he says. — But, as I was just saying, was it not Nature who gave you this very loving of it? And the same Nature now says: "Let it go at last, and trouble yourself with it no more."

24. From the same.

If a man dies young, he blames the gods that he has trouble laid on him when he ought already to have been at rest; and yet, no less, when death draws near, he wants to live, and sends for the physician, and begs him to spare no zeal or care. Wonderful, he said, are men, who neither wish to live nor to die.

25. From Epictetus.

Against whoever you set yourself with menace and threat, remember to warn him first that you are a gentle man; and having done nothing savage, you will pass your days without regret and without reproach.

26. You are a little soul carrying a corpse about, as Epictetus used to say.

27. He said one must discover a craft concerning assent, and, in the field that concerns the impulses, keep the faculty of attention — so that they be made with reservation, that they be social, that they be according to merit; and to abstain altogether from desire, and to use aversion toward none of the things not within our power.

28. The contest, he said, is not over some ordinary matter, but over being sane or mad.

28a. Socrates used to say: "What do you want? To have the souls of rational beings, or of irrational ones?" "Of rational beings." "Of what sort of rational beings — sound, or worthless?" "Sound." "Why then do you not seek it?" "Because we have it." "Why then do you fight and quarrel?"

29. From Epictetus's Manual.

In everything take thought for nothing so much as for safety; for it is safer to keep silent than to speak. And let go any speaking that will be empty of sense and open to reproach [. . .]

30. There is no fitting out a ship from a single anchor, nor a life from a single hope. From the same.

31. From the same.

We must stride across, so far as we can, with both our legs and our hopes.

32. It is more needful to heal the soul than the body; for death is better than living badly.

33. From the same.

Of pleasant things, those that come most rarely give the most delight. From the same.

34. From the same.

If a man should overstep the measure, the most delightful things would become the least delightful.

35. No one is free who is not master of himself.

36. Truth is a thing immortal and everlasting; it furnishes us not with a beauty that withers with time, nor with a freedom of speech that justice takes away, but with the just and the lawful, distinguishing from them the unjust, and bringing it to conviction.