Epicurus — "The greatest disturbance of the soul is not pain, but the fear of pain."
The greatest disturbance of the soul is not pain, but the fear of pain.
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More from Epicurus
"Against all things it is possible to provide security, but as against death we all live in an unwalled city."
"No pleasure is a bad thing in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures are gained bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures."
"The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance."
"The man who says that all things happen of necessity cannot criticize one who says that not all things happen of necessity. For he admits that the very statement he is making is made of necessity."
"The wise man, when he is in danger, laughs at the danger."
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.