Epictetus — "The true man is one who wills to be a man, and he who wills to be a man is a man…"
The true man is one who wills to be a man, and he who wills to be a man is a man.
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More from Epictetus
"If a man does not know to what port he is sailing, no wind is favorable."
"Do not be surprised if you are sometimes troubled by external things; for it is not the things themselves that trouble you, but your judgment about them."
"The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter."
"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 a man has a bad smell, he may be asked, 'To what does this belong?' To a man. 'Yes, but to a bad man.' To a bad man? 'Yes, for he is a beast.'"
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.