Epictetus — "It is not poverty that makes a man miserable, but covetousness."
It is not poverty that makes a man miserable, but covetousness.
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More from Epictetus
"If a man is unhappy, this must be due to his own fault, that he has forgotten that all things are in his own power."
"It is not poverty that is feared, but the opinion about poverty."
"If a man has a bad smell, he knows it not, but his neighbor knows it. So too with our faults."
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things."
"If you wish to improve, be content to appear foolish or stupid."
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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