Epicurus — "The wise man is a happy man, even in the midst of torture."
The wise man is a happy man, even in the midst of torture.
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More from Epicurus
"Justice is a contract of utility entered into to prevent men from harming or being harmed by one another."
"We must, therefore, be careful how we choose our pleasures, and how we avoid our pains."
"Pleasure is the starting point and goal of living blessedly."
"The wise man is but little favored by fortune, but his reason procures him the greatest and most valuable goods."
"The man who says that all things happen of necessity cannot criticize one who says that not all things happen of necessity. For he admits that the very statement he is making is made of necessity."
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.