"Epictetus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Providence of God, discoursed with great plausibility on this subject, but still in reality retained the ancient doctrine of universal fate. From this example, a judgment may be formed concerning the necessity of using some caution, in appealing to the writings of Seneca, Antoninus, and Epictetus, as authorities, in determining what were the original doctrines of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... the best tools a minister can have. He should be read in the great literary and sermonic literature, the work of Bossuet, Massillon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Fenelon, Marcus Aurelius, mediaeval homilies, Epictetus, Pascal, Guyon, Amiel, Vinet, La Brunetiere, Phelps, Jeremy Taylor, Barrows, Fuller, Whitefield, Bushnell, Edwards, Bacon, Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Davies, Law, Bunyan, Luther, Spalding, Robertson, Kingsley, Maurice, Chalmers, Guthrie, Stalker, Drummond, Maclaren, Channing, Beecher, and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the pastor opposed this resolve. Patience departed, carrying with him as his only belonging the coat he had on his back, and an abridgment of the teachings of Epictetus. For this book he had a great affection, and, thanks to much study of it, could read as many as three of its pages a day without unduly tiring himself. The rustic anchorite went into the desert to live. At first he built himself a hut of branches in a wood. Then, as wolves attacked ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... "Some favourite passages in Epictetus, perhaps, or in the Bible," said Jacques: "some reasons confirmed by the whispers of the priests. Nothing short of priestly influence could blind you to such an opportunity as we now have of disembarrassing ourselves of the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... love of strong drink was brought among them. When all was in vain, he would go weeping away into the woods, and hide himself there till the hateful fire-water was all consumed and the madness over. Brainerd was greatly touched by this red-skinned Epictetus, who, he said, had more honesty, sincerity, and conscientiousness than he had ever met with in an Indian, and more of the temper of true religion; and he expounded to him the Christian doctrine with great carefulness and double earnestness. The self-taught philosopher broke ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Friend, praising Homer and Epictetus and Sophocles, for it seems to some to have a smatch of priggishness. Nor am I one of those who think very highly of the much longer Sick King in Bokhara which (with a fragment of an Antigone, whereof ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... times like this, always reminded me of Epictetus. "I will put you in prison!" said his master. "My body, you mean," replied Epictetus calmly. "I will cut your head off," said his master. "Have I said that my head could not be cut off?" A ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... again with them that had offended me, as soon as any of them would be content to seek unto me again. To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of: whom also I must thank that ever I lighted upon Epictetus his Hypomnemata, or moral commentaries and common-factions: which also he ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... sorry to say good-bye to me, gave me a present of an English translation of the works of the philosopher Epictetus, with several passages, favourites of his own, marked in red ink. One of these I used frequently to read and still think about occasionally, not because I have the slightest intention of trying to live in the spirit of it, but ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... M. de Saci (carefully reported by the latter), in which the conversation was on the subject of Montaigne and Epictetus contrasted,—these two authors Pascal acknowledged to be the ones most constantly in his hand,—said gently of Montaigne, "Montaigne is absolutely pernicious to those who have any inclination toward irreligion, or toward vicious indulgences." ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... once enjoyed the blessings of freedom, but had been reduced to bondage by the calamities of war. Unlike the Negro slaves of America, they were usually of the same color as their masters; and in some instances, better educated, more refined, and of more delicate frame, than those whom they served. Epictetus, one of the ablest of the Stoic philosophers, was a slave. Horace and Juvenal ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... consideration. The common type of mind is exceedingly keen on all matters which relate to its physical welfare—exceedingly keen. It is the unintellectual miser who sweats blood at the loss of a hundred dollars. It is the Epictetus who smiles when the last vestige of physical welfare ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Cleanthes, have survived. We are chiefly indebted to Diogenes Laertius[822] and Cicero[823] for an insight into their system. The Hymn of Cleanthes sheds some light on their Theology, and their moral principles are exhibited in "The Fragments" of Epictetus, and "The Life and Meditations" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Alexandrian Poets; Philetas; Callimachus; Theocritus; Bion; Moschus.—3. The Prose Writers of Alexandria; Zenodotus; Aristophanes; Aristarchus; Eratosthenes; Euclid; Archimedes.—4, Philosophy of Alexandria; Neo- Platonism.—5. Anti-Neo-Platonic Tendencies; Epictetus; Lucian; Longinus. —6. Greek Literature in Rome; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Flavius Josephus; Polybius; Diodorus; Strabo; Plutarch.—7. Continued Decline of Greek Literature.—8. Last Echoes of the Old Literature; Hypatia; Nonnus; Musaeus; ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... chances for virtuous Pagans. S. T. C. in a more liberal generation is shocked; and of course in his readers as in himself secretly, he professes more liberal ideas. Aye, but how is he entitled to these ideas? For, on further consideration, it is not Cicero only, or Epictetus only, that would suffer under this law of Christianity viewed in its reagency, but also Abraham, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hezekiah. Because, how could they benefit by a Redeemer not yet revealed—nay, by a Redeemer not even existing? For it is not the second person in the Trinity—not ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... judicious peruser may honestly make use of it in the actions of his life, with advantage. The Lamprey, they say, hath a venemous string runs all along the back of it; take that out, and it is serv'd in for a choyce dish to dainty palates; Epictetus the Philosopher, sayes, Every thing hath two handles, as the fire brand, it may be taken up at one end in the bare hand without hurt: the other being laid hold on, will cleave to the very flesh, and the smart of it will ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... very superior! Any one might profit by reading them. It was a long time since she had read Mrs Chapone, but she knew she used to think that Deborah could have said the same things quite as well; and as for Mrs Carter! people thought a deal of her letters, just because she had written "Epictetus," but she was quite sure Deborah would never have made use of such a common expression as "I ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... us compare Jehovah to Epictetus—a man to whom no revelation was ever made—a man to whom this God did not appear. Let us listen to him: "Remember your servants are to be treated as your own brothers—children of the same God." On the subject of liberty is not Epictetus a better authority ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Aristotle and Varro's books were both a prejudice to the authors, and an hindrance to learning, and an occasion of the greatest part of them being lost. The largeness of Plutarch's treatises is a great cause of his being neglected, while Longinus and Epictetus, in their pamphlet Remains, are every one's companions. Origen's 6000 volumes (as Epiphanius will have it) were not only the occasion of his venting more numerous errors, but also for the most part of their perdition.—Were it not for Euclid's Elements, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... master of my passion, that I could not sleep for the thoughts of my losing the privilege of the leads, and other things which in themselves are small and not worth half the trouble. The more fool am I, and must labour against it for shame, especially I that used to preach up Epictetus's rule: ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... down there. Just back of that new building is the very spot where Romulus would have lived if he had ever existed. On those very streets Scipio Africanus walked, and Caesar and Cicero and Paul and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus and Belisarius, and Hildebrand and Michelangelo, and at one time or another about every one you ever heard of. And how many people came to get emotions they couldn't get anywhere else! There was Goethe. How he felt! He took it all in. And there was Shelley ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... know the Concord philosopher Emerson, and the great names of antiquity, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Plato, have yet great ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and from the remotest ages of recorded history. Thus Diogenes talks with Plato, AEsop with a young slave girl in Egypt, Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn in prison, Dante with Beatrice, Leofric with Lady Godiva,—all these and many others, from Epictetus to Cromwell, are brought together and speak of life and love and death, each from his own view point. Occasionally, as in the meeting of Henry and Anne Boleyn, the situation is tense and dramatic; but as a rule the characters simply meet and converse in the same quiet strain, which becomes, after ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fall noisily lo the floor, we fall into a great rage. If he replies with too much spirit, if his countenance shows ill humor, have we any right to have him flogged? Often we strike too hard and shatter a limb or break a tooth." The philosopher Epictetus, who was a slave, had had his ankle fractured in this way by his master. Women were no more humane. Ovid, in a compliment paid to a woman, says, "Many times she had her hair dressed in my presence, but never did she thrust her needle into the arm ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... I played fast he was angry because I hurried him; if I forgot to mark my points he declared, making his profit out of the mistake, that I was always too rapid. It was like the tyranny of a schoolmaster, the despotism of the rod, of which I can really give you no idea unless I compare myself to Epictetus under the yoke of a malicious child. When we played for money his winnings gave him the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... some charmed gift to be dropped down upon our youth, parents and teachers could ask nothing better than that each young heart should storm the gates of learning with such enthusiasm as belonged to Milton or Epictetus. The Roman slave had one leg broken and twisted by a cruel master, but in his enthusiasm for knowledge he used the dim light of his cell for copying the thoughts of great authors, and lay awake at night reflecting upon the problems of life and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... also given the philosophy in a supplement, thinking it better that it should come after the Thoughts themselves. We shall issue a pocket edition on very thin paper for the convenience of such as wish to make a special study of the work. We also propose to issue a similar edition of the writings of Epictetus. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... protest, in behalf of a pure and authoritative faith, came from the Stoics. The names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius Antoninus gave dignity, if they could not bring safety, to the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion—and in what baser and uglier circumstances could human being find himself?—to find out the secret of being truly free; namely, to be discontented ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Rome, appear to have been either public or private teachers; generally either of philosophy or of rhetoric. This remark will be found to hold true, from the days of Lysias and Isocrates, of Plato and Aristotle, down to those of Plutarch and Epictetus, Suetonius, and Quintilian. To impose upon any man the necessity of teaching, year after year, in any particular branch of science seems in reality to be the most effectual method for rendering him completely master of it himself. By being obliged to go every year over ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... imagining and feeling. The Great Teacher was right when he bade men refrain not merely from murder, but from angry thoughts; not merely from adultery, but from lustful glances; not merely from perjury, but from the desire to deceive. Epictetus puts it, "What we ought not to do we should not even think of doing." And Marcus Aurelius writes, "We should accustom ourselves to think upon othing that we should hesitate to reveal to others if they asked to know it." This is sound advice. Without attempting ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... don't reproach myself. I had a merry time of it while it lasted. Time stops for no one, but I did my best; I don't reproach myself.' There's the true philosopher, though a slave; more outspoken than AEsop, more practical than Epictetus." ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... long, and I put in part of it wandering about with Partial, hunting for squirrels, which he took much delight in chasing up trees. Again, I lay for a time reading one of my favorite authors, the wise stoic, Epictetus, tarrying over one ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... quite sure had been well matured before the lips opened. Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general intelligence; and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain doctor, who, venturing on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine auditor. One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar charm to her conversation. She had no petty egotism, no spirit of contradiction; she never talked for effect. A happy thought ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... worship. These sins of flesh were especially rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... confidence can one with no pretensions to original scholarship, however he may use the work of deeper students, express his opinion on any special point in a survey of thirty centuries? If, accordingly, any competent critic shall trouble himself to convict the present writer of error: "This view of Epictetus confuses the earlier and the later Stoics;" or "This account of the Hebrew prophets lacks the latest fruit of research,"—or, other like defect,—acknowledgment of such error as quite possible may be freely made in advance. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... a golden sceptre in his right hand. And, which is more, he would now and then make Alexander the Great mad, so enormously would he abuse him when he had not well patched his breeches; for he used to pay his skin with sound bastinadoes. I saw Epictetus there, most gallantly apparelled after the French fashion, sitting under a pleasant arbour, with store of handsome gentlewomen, frolicking, drinking, dancing, and making good cheer, with abundance of crowns of the sun. Above the lattice were written ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... [Footnote: These ascetics were here before Christianity (see Philo Judaeus); in fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of conduct still survived. It received ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... second century, the pupil of Epictetus), when speaking of the public overseers or superintendents in India, says:[42] "They oversee what goes on in the country or towns, and report everything to the king, where the people have a king, and to the magistrates, where ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... that all these faithful servers are like to become so radical a part of the my and mine of existence, as to make it really alarming. When one's comfort is thus bound up in fire-boy and washerwoman, alas! what will become of the grand philosophy of Epictetus? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well, suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You, my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, then, for my private good, how, without aid from the noble cripple, Epictetus, you have arrived at his heroic ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... fitness for food when done, they should never have ventured to recommend them to others: the reader of them will often put the same quaere, as Jeremy, in Congreve's comedy of "Love for Love," when Valentine observes, "There's a page doubled down in Epictetus that is a feast for an emperor.—Jer. Was Epictetus a real cook, or ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... May 14, 1826.—I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castiliain ballads, with great delight. There's an assemblage for you. Now tell me, had you rather be the brilliant De Stael or the useful Edgeworth?—though De Stael is useful too, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Epictetus did not learn Greek at 81—they were Greeks. It was the Roman Cato who began to ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the garden-walk now to meet him, and wrung his hand heartily: "Bruce! is it possible? You have not crossed my threshold since the old Epictetus days." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... recommended their disciples to take an active share in public affairs; and in the Roman world, for several centuries, the best public men were strongly inclined to Stoicism. Nevertheless, the logical tendency of Stoicism seems to me to be fulfilled only in such men as Diogenes and Epictetus. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... No worldly learning can these points discuss, Books teach them not as they are taught to us. Illiterate call us!—let their wisest man Draw forth his thousands as your Teacher can: They give their moral precepts: so, they say, Did Epictetus once, and Seneca; One was a slave, and slaves we all must be, Until the Spirit comes and sets us free. Yet hear you nothing from such man but works; They make the Christian service like the Turks. "Hark to the Churchman: day by day he cries, 'Children ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... it seem'd borrow'd, where 'twas only born. Her morals, too, were in her bosom bred, By great examples daily fed, What in the best of books, her father's life, she read. And to be read herself she need not fear; Each test, and every light, her Muse will bear, Though Epictetus with his lamp were there. Even love (for love sometimes her Muse exprest) Was but a lambent flame which play'd about her breast, Light as the vapours of a morning dream; So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... as have acquired a semi-canonical authority in the world, as expressing the highest sentiment and hope of nations. Such are the "Hermes Trismegistus," pretending to be Egyptian remains; the "Sentences" of Epictetus; of Marcus Antoninus; the "Vishnu Sarma" of the Hindoos; the "Gulistan" of Saadi; the "Imitation of Christ," of Thomas Kempis; and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in the scientific or literary world would not possess. The impressions produced by dreams are so fugitive—so easy is it for persons unintentionally to deceive themselves in recalling their dreams' experience—that Epictetus, long ago, advised young men not to entertain any company by relating their dreams, as they could only, he affirmed, be interesting to themselves, and perhaps would, after all their pains, be disbelieved by their auditors. Nevertheless, it would be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Ages, which associated saintliness with sickness, has given way to modern 'muscular Christianity.'... This is but one evidence of the tendency toward the 'religion of healthymindedness' described by Professor James. Epictetus taught that no one could be the highest type of philosopher unless in exuberant health. Expressions of Emerson's and Walt Whitman's show how much their spiritual exaltation was bound up with health ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... apo limenos men oudeis anagetai, me thusas tois Thesis, kai parakalesas autous boethous.] Arrian upon Epictetus. l. 3. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... freedman and favourite of the Emperor Nero, was the master of Epictetus, the lame slave and Stoic philosopher, who was amongst the greatest of pagan moralists. Epaphroditus, who treated his slave with great cruelty, is said to have been one day twisting his leg for amusement. Epictetus said, 'If you continue, you ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo |
