Epicurus — "The pleasure which is sought after by the many is not true pleasure, but only th…"
The pleasure which is sought after by the many is not true pleasure, but only the absence of pain.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Epicurus
"The wise man counts it a greater advantage to be content with little than to be rich."
"The flesh cries out for an end to hunger, an end to thirst, an end to cold. If a man has these, and is confident of having them in the future, he might contend in happiness even with Zeus."
"Against all things it is possible to provide security, but as against death we all live in an unwalled city."
"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us."
"It is not possible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is not possible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living a pleasant life."
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.