Epictetus — "What would you rather have? A beautiful garden, or a good one? A beautiful garde…"
What would you rather have? A beautiful garden, or a good one? A beautiful garden is one that is good; a good garden is not necessarily beautiful.
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More from Epictetus
"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?"
"A man's master is he who has power over what the man wishes or does not wish, to secure or to take away."
"Small-minded people are fond of saying, 'By Zeus, I wish I were not a philosopher!'"
"If you wish for anything good, you must get it from yourself."
"If a man has a bad smell, he is not to blame for it, but his clothes. If a man is ill, he is not to blame for it, but his body. If a man is a fool, he is not to blame for it, but his mind."
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.