Epictetus — "Never say about anything, 'I have lost it,' but only, 'I have given it back.'"
Never say about anything, 'I have lost it,' but only, 'I have given it back.'
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More from Epictetus
"If you wish to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and if you are thought to be somebody by others, distrust…"
"As a mark is not set up for the purpose of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the universe."
"It is better to die of hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation."
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
"If a man has seen a snake, and has not been bitten, but has been frightened, he is not on that account the less afraid, although he may say, 'I am not afraid.'"
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.