Epicurus — "We should rather laugh than be sad at the misfortunes of others."
We should rather laugh than be sad at the misfortunes of others.
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More from Epicurus
"The greatest good is to be free from pain."
"The wise man, when he is in danger, laughs at the danger."
"Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when old grow weary of studying it. For no one is either too early or too late for the health of the soul."
"The pleasure which is sought after by the many is not true pleasure, but only the absence of pain."
"We must release ourselves from the prison of business and politics."
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.