Epicurus — "The time when we are best able to enjoy ourselves is when we have least need of …"
The time when we are best able to enjoy ourselves is when we have least need of enjoyment.
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More from Epicurus
"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool."
"The wise man will not groan and howl when he is tortured."
"The wise man is not afraid of death; indeed, he welcomes it as a release from the bondage of the body."
"The greatest good is prudence; it is even more precious than philosophy itself."
"The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the end of life."
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.