Epictetus — "If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both dishonored y…"
If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both dishonored yourself in that, and neglected what you might have done.
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More from Epictetus
"Never say about anything, 'I have lost it,' but only, 'I have given it back.'"
"Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene."
"Good and evil, per Epictetus, lie only in the will."
"Show me a man who is sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy: show him to me, for the sake of the gods! I long to see a Stoic."
"A man's master is he who has power over what the man wishes or does not wish, to secure or to take away."
About Epictetus (c. 50-135 CE)
Greek Stoic philosopher and former slave whose Discourses (recorded by his student Arrian) shaped Marcus Aurelius and the modern Stoic revival. Closely associated with Seneca (earlier Roman Stoic) and Marcus Aurelius (his student-by-text on the imperial throne). For an intellectual contrast, see Epicurus, Greek philosopher of pleasure-as-tranquility — the Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years — Epicurean materialist hedonism is the precise alternative the Stoic discipline-of-acceptance was built against.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epictetus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002); Pierre Hadot (Collège de France) — Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995); Anthony R. Birley (Manchester, Roman historian) — Marcus Aurelius (1987) — the standard biography of Epictetus's most famous student. These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epictetus.
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