Epicurus — "It is better to lie on a humble pallet and be free from care than to own a golde…"
It is better to lie on a humble pallet and be free from care than to own a golden bed and be full of trouble.
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More from Epicurus
"Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."
"The end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear."
"The greatest good is to be found in the prudent management of the good things of life."
"Against all things it is possible to find security, but with regard to death we all dwell in an unfortified city."
"If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not give him more money; diminish his desires."
About Epicurus (341-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who founded the Garden school in Athens, whose materialist atomism and pleasure-as-tranquility ethics shaped Hellenistic thought. Closely associated with Lucretius (Roman successor whose De Rerum Natura preserved Epicurean physics). For an intellectual contrast, see the Stoics (Zeno, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), the Hellenistic ethical school of discipline-of-acceptance — Stoic 'live according to nature' and Epicurean 'pleasure and absence of pain' framed every ancient ethical decision — every Roman of Cicero's era was implicitly choosing one path or the other. The Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epicurus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (1974); Tim O'Keefe (Georgia State University, ancient philosophy) — Epicureanism (2010); David Sedley (Cambridge, Classics) — Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epicurus.