Epictetus — "It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave …"
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
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More from Epictetus
"If you see anybody wail and complain, call him a slave, though he be clad in purple."
"If you want to be a great writer, write great books. If you want to be a great painter, paint great pictures. But if you want to be a great philosopher, be a great human being."
"If you want to be a man, or a woman, and do what is proper to a human being, do not go to others and ask, 'Am I a human being?'"
"To be happy is to desire nothing, since a man who desires something is not happy, but rather miserable, if he does not get what he desires."
"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."
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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