Epicurus — "It is not what we have, but what we enjoy, that constitutes our abundance."
It is not what we have, but what we enjoy, that constitutes our abundance.
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More from Epicurus
"We should not pretend to be philosophers, but be philosophers in reality."
"It is better to be unfortunate in a reasonable manner than to be fortunate in an unreasonable one."
"Remember that you were born with two ears and one tongue, so that you may listen more and speak less."
"Since it is not possible to get rid of the fear of death without knowledge of the universe, we cannot enjoy unmixed pleasure."
"A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is no easy thing to do without servility to mobs or monarchs."
About Epicurus (341-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who founded the Garden school in Athens, whose materialist atomism and pleasure-as-tranquility ethics shaped Hellenistic thought. Closely associated with Lucretius (Roman successor whose De Rerum Natura preserved Epicurean physics). For an intellectual contrast, see the Stoics (Zeno, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), the Hellenistic ethical school of discipline-of-acceptance — Stoic 'live according to nature' and Epicurean 'pleasure and absence of pain' framed every ancient ethical decision — every Roman of Cicero's era was implicitly choosing one path or the other. The Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epicurus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (1974); Tim O'Keefe (Georgia State University, ancient philosophy) — Epicureanism (2010); David Sedley (Cambridge, Classics) — Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epicurus.