Epictetus — "It is better to starve to death in freedom from grief and fear, than to live in …"
It is better to starve to death in freedom from grief and fear, than to live in plenty with perturbation.
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More from Epictetus
"If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase."
"If a man is unhappy, this must be due to his own fault, that he does not understand that it is in his power to be happy."
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things."
"Whoever is not content with what he has, would not be content with what he wishes to have."
"If you pin your hopes on things outside your control, taking upon yourself things which rightfully belong to others, you are liable to stumble, fall, suffer, and blame both gods and men."
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.
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