Epictetus — "Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you…"
Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
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More from Epictetus
"The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have."
"Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day – especially death – and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess."
"Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that are not within our control."
"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."
"It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows."
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.
Details
This sentiment is more prominently found in Marcus Aurelius's 'Meditations,' though the idea of living virtuously in the face of death is Stoic.
Date: c. 108 AD (approximate)
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