Epictetus — "If you want to be rich, do not add to your possessions but subtract from your de…"
If you want to be rich, do not add to your possessions but subtract from your desires.
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More from Epictetus
"When you have decided that a thing is good, and you cling to it, and you are not disturbed by it, then you have found your true good."
"For where you find unrest, grief, fear, frustrated desire, failed aversion, jealousy and envy, happiness has no room for admittance. And where values are false, these passions inevitably follow."
"When you have to deal with a man who is angry, remember that he is not angry with you, but with himself; he is only venting his anger on you."
"When you are going to meet with any person, and particularly one of those who are considered to be great, represent to yourself what Socrates or Zeno would have done in such a case."
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
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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