Epictetus — "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
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 Epictetus
"It is better to die of hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation."
"Remember that if you are doing something for your own good, you must not be ashamed of it, even if the mob is going to misinterpret it."
"If you want to be a man of honour, you must be a man of honour. If you want to be a good man, you must be a good man. If you want to be a wise man, you must be a wise man. If you want to be a fool, yo…"
"You are a little soul carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say."
"You are not your body, you are a soul."
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.