Epictetus — "What would it be like to be a donkey? To be driven by a stick, to carry burdens,…"
What would it be like to be a donkey? To be driven by a stick, to carry burdens, to have no choice? It would be a simple life, wouldn't it?
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More from Epictetus
"If a man is unhappy, this must be due to his own fault, that he does not understand that it is in his power to be happy."
"If you would not be a man of many words, be a man of many deeds."
"If you want to be a writer, write."
"If a man has a bad smell, he knows it not, but his neighbor knows it. So too with our faults."
"If you want to live a life free from trouble, you must train your mind to be indifferent to external things."
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.