Epictetus — "Good and evil, per Epictetus, lie only in the will."
Good and evil, per Epictetus, lie only in the will.
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More from Epictetus
"As a man, you are a fragment of God; you have within you a part of Him. Why then are you ignorant of your own kinship, or do you not know whence you came?"
"If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write."
"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him."
"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."
"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."
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.