Epictetus — "Small-minded people are fond of saying, 'By Zeus, I wish I were not a philosophe…"
Small-minded people are fond of saying, 'By Zeus, I wish I were not a philosopher!'
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More from Epictetus
"Remember that if you are doing something for your own good, you must not be ashamed of it, even if the mob is going to misinterpret it."
"When you are about to say anything, first examine what you are going to say, and then speak."
"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."
"Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the play is made by the author. If he wishes it to be short, it is short; if long, it is long. If he wishes you to act the part of a poor man, see th…"
"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."
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.