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
"Don't seek to have things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you."
"The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have."
"The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil men."
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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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