"Epicurus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought be present, that there is no dishonor in it, nor does it make the governing intelligence worse, for it does not damage the intelligence either so far as the intelligence is rational[A] or so far as it is social. Indeed in the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which are disagreeable to us are ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... paradise; in fact I doubt if we earn Elysian Fields by comparison; we shall find the restful peace more enchanting we only long for (I suppose as long as one is mortal one longs for a something), a few charming women, then we would have a realm for Epicurus himself. Evening, and pure, soft tints everywhere, the long shadows blending to disappear in the dark, like the last waves of unrest, the young moon languidly rising to lighten loving faces of those in this haven of peace, the fragrance ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... of the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in reverie, who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had one day formed our earth. Pomponace said: "Se il mondo non e eterno, per tutti ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... duality. He didn't exist in the progressive ancient world. The dualism of Man and State began with the decline of Graeco-Roman civilisation, and was perpetuated by the teaching of Christianity. The philosophy of Epicurus and of Zeno an utter detachment from the business of mankind—prepared the way for the spirit of the Gospels. So, at length, we get our notion of Church and State—a separation ruinous to religion and ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... aerial spirit, but at the same time immortal. Diogenes (not he who was a cynical philosopher after having coined base money) declared that the soul was a portion of the substance of God: an idea which we must confess was very sublime. Epicurus maintained that it was composed of parts in the same manner as ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... night once come, our happiness, our unhappiness,—it is all abolished; vanished, clean gone; a thing that has been: not of the slightest consequence whether we were as happy as eupeptic Curtis, as the fattest pig of Epicurus, or unhappy as Job with potsherds, as musical Byron with Giaours and sensibilities of the heart. But our work,—behold, that is not abolished, that has not vanished: our work, behold, it remains, or the want of it remains; for endless Times and Eternities, remains; and that is now ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Royal Society of London, vide his "Elephant in the Moon." [27] One philosopher.—Democritus, the so-called "laughing (or scoffing) philosopher." He lived B.C. about 400 years. Fable XXVI., Book VIII., is devoted to him and how he was treated by his contemporaries. [28] Another.—Epicurus, founder of the Epicurean philosophy. He lived B. C. about 300 years. [29] Water crooks a stick.—An allusion to the bent appearance which a stick has in water, consequent upon the refraction of light. [30] The wars.—This fable appears to have been composed about the beginning ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno, and having knocked with the hammer against the door, he ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... first offered by Epicurus. He felt that the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause; and he found it, or presumed he found it not in a spiritual God, which he claims can not exist, nor in corporeal god which ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... you to such a supper with such a woman? and her own description too? Is not her "champaigne and chicken" worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this stanza contains the "puree" of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:—I mean the practical philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master; for I have been too long at the university not to know that the philosopher was himself a moderate man. But, after all, would not some ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ship!" Tryphaena trembled violently, "You would think we had slept together," she cried, "for a bust of Neptune, which I saw in the gallery at Baiae, said to me, in my dream—You will find Giton aboard Lycas' ship!" "From which you can see that Epicurus was a man inspired," remarked Eumolpus; "he passed sentence upon mocking phantasms of that kind in ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is burner, wild thyme, and water mints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure where you walk or tread." Sir William Temple says Epicurus studied, exercised, and taught his philosophy in his garden. Milton, we know, passed many hours together in his garden at Chalfont; Cowley poured forth the greatness of his soul in his rural retreat at Chertsey; and Lord Shaftesbury wrote his "Characteristics," at a delightful spot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... Master-Cook conceives himself to be a pupil of Epicurus, whose favourite but ambiguous axiom, that "Voluptuousness is the sovereign good," was interpreted by the bon-vivans of antiquity ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Hogsnorton, where, according to popular saying, the pigs play upon the organ; a proverb which he interpreted allegorically, as having reference to the herd of Epicurus, of which litter Horace confessed himself a porker. His name of Erasmus he derived partly from his father having been the son of a renowned washerwoman, who had held that great scholar in clean linen all the while he was at Oxford; a task of some difficulty, as he was only ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... good will towards men. Ask the atheist, the deist, the Chinese, and they will tell you that the foundation of their system of morals is selfish enjoyment. Ask the philosophers of the Grecian schools,—Epicurus, Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca,—and you will find them discoursing upon the Supreme Good. They will tell you it is pleasure, ease, temperance, prudence, fortitude, justice: not one of them will whisper the name of love, unless in its gross and physical ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... to her that Jean Jacques had ceased to care for the charms which once he had so proudly proclaimed. There was in her the strain of the religion of Epicurus. She desired always that her visible corporeal self should be admired and desired, that men should say, "What a splendid creature!" It was in her veins, an undefined philosophy of life; and she had ever measured the love of Jean Jacques by his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain run thus—Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... diversions until the dawn. The next day the friar who had laved his part with so much facetiousness, with more of the manner of a brigand than a religious, more suitable for the school of Sardanapalus or of Epicurus than for the life of a cloister, said that he had lost more than eighty doubloons, or gold ounces—it appearing that his sleeve refused to protect that which he had made a vow ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... existence of THE COSMOS,—for the commencement of the existing order of Nature is admitted to be comparatively recent,—but the eternal existence of Matter and Motion; and attempts to account for the origin of the world and of the races by which it is peopled, either by ascribing it, with Epicurus, to a fortuitous concourse of atoms, or, with more modern Speculatists, to a law of progressive development. This has been called the Epicurean Hypothesis, because Epicurus, while nominally admitting ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... verses of the poets; others listened to the prose, spoken with much art, by men who were neither actors nor poets, but to whom youth and solitude gave an unaccustomed eloquence, which appeared to them better than everything else in the world. "Why," said La Fontaine, "does not our master Epicurus descend into the garden? Epicurus never abandoned his pupils, the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the age, At my familiar lines so gravely rage? In measures loosly plain, blunt satyr flows, And all the people so sincerely shows. For whose a stranger to the joys of love? Who, can't the thoughts of such lost pleasures move? Such Epicurus own'd the chiefest bliss, And such lives the ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... was a very different philosophy at the very antagonist pole,—not blinding itself by abstractions too elevated, submitting to what it finds, bending to the absolute facts and realities of man's nature, and affably adapting itself to human imperfections. This was the philosophy of Epicurus; and undoubtedly, as a beginning, and for the elementary purpose of conciliating the affections of the pupil, it was well devised; but here the misfortune was, that the ideal, or maximum perfectionis, attainable by human nature, was pitched ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... not so silly after all; but 'twould be highly unpleasant were Epicurus and Leucolophas to come up and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... to make it. Nor did he. Turning over a page he also contrived to turn the laugh yet once again, this time against the too-presuming artist. Finding, perhaps, the coarsest of the sketches, one in keeping with the "fat and splendid pig from the drove of Epicurus," he in his turn wrote the name of Holbein above the wanton boor at his carousals. It was a reprisal not more delicate than the spirit with which subjects too sacred to have been named in the same breath with Folly,—the very words of our Lord Himself,—had been dragged ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... of the devils. Few were the men who, like Erasmus, could compare Christ with Socrates, Plato and Seneca; fewer still those who could say with Franck, "Heretic is a title of honor, for truth is always called heresy." The names of Marcion and Pelagius, Epicurus and Mahomet, excited a passion of hatred hardly comprehensible to us. The {584} refutation of the Koran issued under Luther's auspices would have been ludicrous had it ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... think of whom?" said the devil, in astonishment, "you cannot surely mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir?—I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... operate many other effects. Some few grains of saffron will give a tincture to a tun of water; but so many grains of civet will give a perfume to a whole chamber of air. And therefore when Democritus (from whom Epicurus did borrow it) held that the position of the solid portions was the cause of colours, yet in the very truth of his assertion he should have added, that the portions are required to be of some magnitude. And this is one cause why colours have little inwardness and necessitude with the nature ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... of shorthand. And how he takes advantage of his opportunities! He remains to the end something of a Puritan in his standards and his public carriage, but in his diary he reveals himself as a pig from the sty of Epicurus, naked and only half-ashamed. He never, it must be admitted, entirely shakes off his timidity. At a crisis he dare not confess in English even in a cipher, but puts the worst in bad French with a blush. In some instances the French may be for facetiousness ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... reckoned with their temperaments when dealing with them, and paid no heed to their actual words. Francis Markrute was a philosopher. A number of the shelves of this, his library, were filled with works on the subject of philosophy, and a well-thumbed volume of the fragments of Epicurus lay on a table by his side. He picked it up now and read: "He who wastes his youth on high feeding, on wine, on women, forgets that he is like a man who wears out his overcoat in the summer." He had not wasted his youth either on wine or women, only he had studied both, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Epicurus's great confidant and familiar, Colotes, set forth a book with this title to it, that according to the tenets of the other philosophers it is impossible to live. Now what occurred to me then to say against him, in the defence of those philosophers, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, and Plutarch always inculcated a decent reverence for the religion of their own country, and of mankind. The devotion of Epicurus was assiduous and exemplary. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest: the Divinity which we worship has given us not only a precept against it, but His own example to the contrary. The world, my lord, would be content to allow you a seventh day ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Moreover, I am a Roman, and the Romans, unlike the Greeks, are unable to pursue profound speculations in a subtle manner. If they adopt a philosophy it is above all in order to derive some practical advantages from it. Siro, who enjoyed great renown among us, taught me the system of Epicurus and thus freed me from vain terrors and turned me aside from the cruelties to which religion persuades ignorant men. I have embraced the views of Pythagoras concerning the souls of men and animals, both of which are of divine essence; this invites us to look upon ourselves ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... after the times of Alexander the Great, and was the contemporary of Demetrius Phalereus. He was instructed in philosophy by Theophrastus, but his own opinions inclined him to that of Epicurus, and he boasted in an epigram, "that if Themistocles freed his country from slavery, Epicurus freed it from irrationality." He was fond of the choicest sensual enjoyments: Phaedrus, in an unfinished tale, describes him to us as even in his exterior, an effeminate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... forensic oratory the wisdom of Plato defines to be politikes moriou eidolon, "the shadow of a fraction of the art of government," or a fourth part of the art of flattery. But Epicurus calls it kakotechnia, reckoning it among the wicked arts. Tisias, who has Gorgias of Leontinum on his side, calls the orator ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... now arranged: next—but why should I go on with a series of selfish and silly details? I merely wish to assure you that it was not the frivolous forgetfulness of a mind, occupied by what is called pleasure (not in the true sense of Epicurus), that kept me away; but a perception of my, then, unfitness to share the society of those whom I value and wish not to displease. I hate being larmoyant, and making a serious face among ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... metaphysics imagine matter so subtle, so supersubtle that they almost make themselves giddy with it, and then think that in this way they have conceived it as a spiritual and yet extended being. If with Epicurus we make virtue determine the will only by means of the pleasure it promises, we cannot afterwards blame him for holding that this pleasure is of the same kind as those of the coarsest senses. For we have no reason whatever ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... it is the system of Epicurus and Lucretius. Without going so far back, there are a thousand others quite as ridiculous, with which it is unnecessary to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... yourselves, my dear brothers in Epicurus!" said the superintendent; "I will not make a comparison between the most humble sinner on the earth and the God we adore, but remember, he gave one day to his friends a repast which is called the Last Supper, and which was nothing but a farewell dinner, like that which we ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Of these wrise and good men some granted the existence of the supposed deities, but denied that they cared about the actions of mankind any more than those of the inferior animals. A merry, jovial, careless life, such as the followers of Epicurus would choose for themselves, was what they assigned for those gods whose being they admitted. Others, more bold or more consistent, entirely denied the existence of deities who apparently had no ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... hand, they have quite lost the art of conjuring; nor can any modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents by his performance. He tells us that "Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the several empires of science than any of their successors have since been able to reach"; which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in British science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as regards the poets of ancient times, this assertion is, perhaps, right; though, if there be any truth in what AElian and Seneca have left on record, of the obscurity, during their lifetime, of such men as Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove that, among the ancients, contemporary fame was a far more rare reward of literary or philosophical eminence than among us moderns. When the "Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited before ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... unworthy as the ignorant hold it to be, seeing that it does not detract from what I have called virtue, nor does it impair the perfection of firmness, but it rather adds to that perfection as it is understood by the vulgar, for Epicurus does not hold that, a true and complete strength and firmness which feels and bears inconveniences, but that which bears them and feels them not. He does not consider him perfect in divine heroic love, who feels the spur, the check, or remorse or trouble about other love; but him who has no feeling ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... to the Stoics to add that paradoxes were quite the order of the day in Greece, though they greatly outdid other schools in producing them. Socrates himself was the father of paradox. Epicurus maintained as staunchly as any Stoic that "No wise man is unhappy", and, if he be not belied, went the length of declaring that the wise man, if put into the bull of Phalaris would exclaim: "How delightful! How ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... once again: what had destiny done if she had, by some blunder, lured Epicurus, or Marcus Aurelius, or Antoninus Pius into the snares that she laid around Oedipus? I will even assume that she might have compelled Antoninus, for instance, to murder his father, and, all unwittingly, to profane the couch of his mother. Would that ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... there were who saw and believed otherwise; and of these the first and chief was a philosopher, who was named Epicurus, who, seeing that each animal as soon as it is born is as it were directed by Nature to its right end, which shuns pain and seeks for pleasure, said that this end or aim of ours was enjoyment. I do not say greedy enjoyment, voluntade, but I write it ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... spectre answered, "I am thy evil genius; thou shalt see me at Philippi." Brutus, with feigned calmness, answered, "I will meet thee there." Disordered, however, in body, and disturbed in mind, Brutus related the affair to Cassius, who, being of the sect of Epicurus, told Brutus that what he supposed he saw was nothing more than mere fancy; that there were no such things as genii or other spirits which could appear to man; that even if they should appear, they could not assume a human shape or voice, and had no power over men. Though Brutus ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... and reigned over them as their absolute queen, through the sheer force of her personal charms, which she never hesitated to bestow upon those whom she found worthy, and who expressed a desire to possess them, studiously regulated, however, by the precepts and principles of the philosophy of Epicurus, which today is rapidly gaining ground in our social relations through its better ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... age Lucretius criticised the whole system of Greek religion in terms of the atomistic and mechanical cosmology of Epicurus: ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... appeared "The Epicurean," a tale of extreme grace and feeling, and conveying the sublime lessons of Epicurus, in one of the most attractive of poetico-prosaic forms. In picturesque knowledge, splendid descriptions, startling and mysterious incidents, and intellectual riches, this work is almost unparalleled in our language; and, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... philanthropy; they had almost succeeded in spoiling his morning. And now this funeral! Would he go into the house and do some reading or write a few letters? No. He could not write letters just them. He was not feeling sufficiently Rabelaisian. Epicurus was his God for the moment. In a mood of heathen wistfulness he lit a cigar and leaned back in the chair trying to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... (at the door, addressing Rankin). Bikouros (Moroccan for Epicurus, a general Moorish name for the missionaries, who are supposed by the Moors to have chosen their calling through a love of luxurious idleness): I have brought to your house a Christian dog and ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... a moment—far above the dull level of debt, and duns, and despair; raised to an upper and, I trust, a better world, where swarms of duns can never arise, and bailiffs never come; raised, my boy, to a region of serene delight, where, like the gods of Epicurus, he might survey from his cloudless calm the darkness and the gloom of the lower world. A fortune, by Jove! Seven thousand pounds sterling a year! Hard cash! Why, the thing fairly took my breath away. I sat down to grapple ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. But "to please himself" he studied history and philosophy, winning great distinction in these branches of learning. He graduated in 1841, as a Doctor of Philosophy, with an essay on the philosophy of Epicurus, and it was his purpose to settle at Bonn as a professor of philosophy. The plan was abandoned, partly because he had already discovered that his bent was toward political activity, and partly because the Prussian government had made scholastic ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... himself. I speak of him, as I think; but any person, who pleases, may judge what he was by his Orations. In his youth, he studied at Athens, and returned from thence a thorough proficient in the doctrine of Epicurus; which, of all others, is the least adapted to form an orator. His cotemporary, Q. Catulus, was an accomplished Speaker, not in the ancient taste, but (unless any thing more perfect can be exhibited) in the finished style of the moderns. He had a plentiful stock of learning; an easy, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... positive and constructive, personality was that of Epicurus. This philosopher was born at Samos, in the year 341 B.C., of Athenian parents. He came to Athens in his eighteenth year. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle at the Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... that I am ever weary? And did you ever know me to disquiet myself in vain?" with the low, musical ripple of laughter that belonged to her sunniest mood. "Had I been born in the classic age, I should have been a devout disciple of Epicurus. Don't imagine that my success has not, thus far, amply repaid me for my toil and ingenuity. Having lived upon excitement all my days, I should starve without it. Pleasure, like safety, is the dearer for being plucked from that evergreen ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... this century, the philosophy so called probably takes its origin from the days when man first began to speculate on moral matters. Bentham and the two Mills, Austin, and George Grote, have repeated in England the substance of what Protagoras and Epicurus taught in Greece, two thousand years before. It is the system of Ethics to which all must incline, who ignore the spiritual side of man's nature and his hopes of a better world. It is a morality ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... with a female; this had been too silly and gross: no, no; it was another-guise thing, and much plainer. You may, if you please, see it at Theleme, on the left hand as you go into the high gallery. Epistemon bought another, wherein were painted to the life the ideas of Plato and the atoms of Epicurus. Rhizotome purchased another, wherein Echo was drawn to the life. Pantagruel caused to be bought, by Gymnast, the life and deeds of Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four fathom long, and three fathom broad, all of Phrygian silk, embossed with ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... motion, and which can neither be stopped nor broken in pieces, nor in any way destroyed or deprived of the least of their properties, was known by the name of the Atomic theory. It was associated with the names of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, and was commonly supposed to admit the existence only of atoms and void, to the exclusion of any other basis ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... taken up by Epicurus, who founded his school three hundred years before Christ—a school which lived and prospered for a very long time. Those who are interested in seeing how a materialistic psychology can be carried out in detail ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... have renounced the dice. Ah! Sallust, when I am wedded to Ione, I trust I may yet redeem a youth of follies. We are both born for better things than those in which we sympathize now—born to render our worship in nobler temples than the stye of Epicurus.' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the philosophers are wrong, as they generally are, even in the commonest things; because they seldom look beyond their own tenets, unless through captiousness, and because they argue more than they meditate, and display more than they examine. Archimedes and Euclid are, in my opinion, after our Epicurus, the worthiest of the name, having kept apart to the demonstrable, the practical, and the useful. Many of the rest are good writers and good disputants; but unfaithful suitors of simple science, boasters ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... not for its obligation but for its grace: he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus relates that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And the true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi says, "It was rumored ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... ordinary sense of the term, he certainly is, but it is of the earlier type. Cyrenaic would be a juster epithet, the "carpe diem" doctrine of the poem is too gross and sensual to have commended itself to the real Epicurus. Intense fatalism, side by side with complete agnosticism, this is the keynote of the poem. Theoretically incompatible, these two "isms" ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... consisted in frequent bathing; for his only craving was for extreme cleanliness. But, just as the disciples of Epicurus would never have adopted his regimen, so would they equally have refused to imitate this last enjoyment; which was a little too manly for them, for his baths were mostly taken on Ocean's back; struggling against the stormy wave, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... freed man. As he was a clever craftsman his lot was not hard. His body was secure, his belly full, his hands and brain pleasantly busy. He lived amongst intelligent people and handsome objects, permitting himself such reasonable emotions as were recommended by his master, Epicurus. He awoke each morning to a quiet day of ordered satisfaction, the prescribed toll of unexacting labour, a little sensual pleasure, a little rational conversation, a cool argument, a judicious appreciation of all that the intellect ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... that, fatigued by the vivacity, which has all the bustling folly of childhood, without the innocence which renders ignorance charming, I am too severe in my strictures. It may be so; and I am aware that the good effects of the revolution will be last felt at Paris; where surely the soul of Epicurus has long been at work to root out the simple emotions of the heart, which, being natural, are always moral. Rendered cold and artificial by the selfish enjoyments of the senses, which the government fostered, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... apparently lit at once by a single flash of electricity. A magnificent repast was spread for the Laureate and his guest, in a lofty, richly frescoed banqueting-hall,—a repast voluptuous enough to satisfy the most ardent votary that ever followed the doctrines of Epicurus. Wonderful dainties and still more wonderful wines were served in princely profusion—and while the strangely met and sympathetically united friends ate and drank, delicious music was played on stringed instruments by unseen performers. When, at intervals, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... "Epicurus said: Either God wishes to hinder evil and cannot, or He can and does not wish to, or He cannot nor does he wish to, or He does wish to and can. If He wishes to and cannot, He is impotent; if He can and does not wish to, He is perverse; if He cannot nor ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... for, in the profligate experience of capitals, the sage is saddened with the knowledge that comeliness, at best, is but an exquisite hypocrisy. I have striven also, vainly, for contentment in the luxuries of voluptuous living. The talisman of Epicurus has evaded my grasp—the glittering bauble![5] The ravishing ideal JOY, has been to me not as the statue to Pygmalion: I have grovelled down in adoration at its feet, and have found it the same immobile, relentless, unresponsive image. Youth is yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the second from the top the plays of Shakespeare in a blue edition; on the third from the bottom Don Quixote, in four volumes, covered with brown paper; a green Milton; the "Comedies of Aristophanes"; a leather book, partially burned, comparing the philosophy of Epicurus with the philosophy of Spinoza; and in a yellow binding Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." On the second from the bottom was lighter literature: "The Iliad"; a "Life of Francis of Assisi"; Speke's "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"; the "Pickwick Papers"; "Mr. Midshipman Easy"; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... direct evidence regarding Lucretius' life.[32] The de rerum natura is addressed to C. Memmius.[33] From Cic. ad Fam. xiii. 1 (where Cicero tells us he employed his good offices with Memmius on behalf of Patro for the preservation of the gardens of Epicurus), it appears that he was not an Epicurean. Memmius is the only contemporary mentioned ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of whom any work has been found, is Epicurus, whose treatise, De Natura, has been successfully unrolled. This and a few other treatises have been published. The library in which this was found appears to have been rich in treatises on the Epicurean philosophy. The only Latin ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... this beast today make any impression upon me." At supper, amongst all sorts of things that were discoursed of, but more particularly Greece and the philosophers there, Cineas, by accident, had occasion to speak of Epicurus, and explained the opinions his followers hold about the gods and the commonwealth, and the object of life, who place the chief happiness of man in pleasure, and decline public affairs as an injury and disturbance of a happy life, and remove the gods afar off both from kindness ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... daughter half-playfully and half-wilfully, announced her intention to follow her own pleasure in a certain case. "Milicent is a Hedonist," said the guest, and the Oxford scholar brought Aristippus and Epicurus into odd conjunction with a Mississippi Valley breakfast-table. He laid aside his white woollen suit, but his attire remained unconventional, not to say outre. Even the wrinkled dress-suit in which he appeared ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... and busy, yet not so busy as he seemed to be, wearing a coat of divers colors, and riding very badly. A franklin, or country gentleman, mixes with the company, with a white beard and red complexion; one of Epicurus's own sons, who held that ale and wheaten bread and fish and dainty flesh, partridge fat, were pure felicity; evidently a man ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... scarcely possible to help anticipating in idea the arrival at a complete theory of matter, in which all its properties will be seen to be merely attributes of motion. If we are to look for the origin of this idea we must go back to Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. We may then, I believe, without missing a single step, skip 1800 years. Early last century we find in Malebranche's "Recherche de la Verite," the statement that "la durete de corps" depends on "petits tourbillons." [1] These words, embedded in a hopeless mass ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... our guidance, there have always been found many to make use of it in a way not meant by the teacher. The Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disrepute to which these principles were likely to lead it, and wholly ceased when Epicurus taught the same opinions more philosophically, Anniceris of Cyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, somewhat improved upon the low-toned philosophy of his master. He granted that there were many things worth our aim, which could not be brought within the narrow bounds of what is useful. He ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... grew out of childhood, admired in secret, and adored without hope, veiled in the beams of some unwearying desire,—maids whom we may never see again, but whose smile remains supreme in our life, what hog of Epicurus could insist on dragging you down to ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... what."—Chandler's Gram., 1821, p. 164. "The Irish thought themselves oppress'd by the Law that forbid them to draw with their Horses Tails."—Brightland's Gram., Pref., p. iii. "So willingly are adverbs, qualifying deceives."—Cutler's Gram., p. 90. "Epicurus for experiment sake confined himself to a narrower diet than that of the severest prisons."—Ib., p. 116. "Derivative words are such as are compounded of other words, as common-wealth, good-ness, false-hood."—Ib., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... before thine eyes something like a scheme of human happiness—wealth, rank, power, glory, pleasure. Now Epicurus, from a sole regard to these considerations, with some consistency concluded the highest good to be pleasure, because all the other objects seem to bring some delight to the soul. But to return to human pursuits and aims: man's mind seeks to recover ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... some fragments of this criticism on oracles by Oenomanus. "I might," says Origen, "have recourse to the authority of Aristotle, and the Peripatetics, to make the Pythoness much suspected. I might extract from the writings of Epicurus and his sectators an abundance of things to discredit oracles; and I might shew that the Greeks themselves made no ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... dainties of sea and land till, wearied through all varieties, their refections became a study with them, and they were fain to feed by invention: novices in true epicurism! which by mediocrity, paucity, quick and healthful appetite, makes delights smartly acceptable; whereby Epicurus himself found Jupiter's brain in a piece of Cytheridian cheese, and the tongues of nightingales in a dish of onions. Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the start of nauseating luxury; unto whose clear and naked ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and his contemporaries as evidence, we shall find that ancient philosophy first came into contact with Italian life in the form which offered the most marked contrast to Christianity, that is to say, Epicureanism. The writings of Epicurus were no longer preserved, and even at the close of the classical age a more or less one-sided conception had been formed of his philosophy. Nevertheless, that phase of Epicureanism which can be studied in Lucretius, and especially in Cicero, is quite sufficient to make men familiar with a godless ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... and showed his will that: 'I should aspire to no eminence of intellect, to no glory of literature, but should lead a soft delicate and idle life immersed in sloth and pleasure, escaping like a runaway from the honor of Parnassus, the Lyceum and the Academy, into the lodgings of Epicurus, and should harbor in those lodgings in a quarter where neither Virgil nor Catullus nor Horace nor Lucretius himself had ever stayed.' This excited such indignation in the poet's breast that: 'I said oftentimes with open face and free speech that ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Maupertuises, are here; have each his work, serious for himself; then gay Supper with a King, who is a great man and the soul of good company."... Sparta and Athens, I tell you: "a Camp of Mars and the Garden of Epicurus; trumpets and violins, War and Philosophy. I have my time all to myself; am at Court and in freedom,—if I were not entirely free, neither an enormous Pension, nor a Gold Key tearing out one's pocket, nor a halter (LICOU), ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... mistress of Epicurus, who called her his "dear little Leontium" as appears by a fragment of one of his letters in Laertius. This Leontium was a woman of talent; "she had the impudence (says Cicero) to write against Theophrastus;" and Cicero, at the same ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Eumolpus, interrupting 'em, "that veneration I pay the divine Epicurus, who so wittily ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... of day after day at which the world of the winter resort deliberately aims, a life like that of the deities of Epicurus, untouched by the cares or interests of the world without. The very gaiety is of the same subdued and quiet order—drives, donkey-rides, picnics of the small and early type. An air of slow respectability pervades the place; the bulk of the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Pantheon. The other was fading away. Deeper and deeper it was sinking back into the golden dream from which it had sprung. Further and further the crystal parapets were retreating. Dimmer and more dim the gorgeous host became. In words of perfect piety Epicurus pictured them in the felicity of the ideal. There, they had no heed of man, no desire for worship, no wish for prayer. It was unnecessary even to think of them. Decorously, with every homage, they ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... contract this early partiality, ought to have a clearer notion of their religious duties: they are not obliged, at an age when the judgment is so weak, to distinguish between the doctrines of Zeno, of Epicurus, and of Christ; and to embarrass their minds with the various morals which were taught in the Porch, in the Academy, and ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... of St. Clare The Red Lily Mother of Pearl The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard The Garden of Epicurus Thais The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche Joan of Arc. Two volumes. $8 net per set. Postage extra. The Comedian's Tragedy The Amethyst Ring M. Bergeret in Paris The Lettered Life Pierre Noziere The White ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... in orderly sequence—"Mind begets mind," as Harvey (De Generatione) says; "opinion is the source of opinion. Democritus with his atoms, and Eudoxus with his chief good which he placed in pleasure, impregnated Epicurus; the four elements of Empedocles, Aristotle; the doctrines of the ancient Thebans, Pythagoras ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... When Epicurus to the world had taught, That pleasure was the chiefest good; —And was perhaps i' th' right, if rightly understood, His life he to his doctrine brought— And in his garden's shade that sovereign ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... who make profession of it, cannot possibly feel the true sentiments of benevolence, or have any regard for genuine virtue, will often find himself, in practice, very much mistaken. Probity and honour were no strangers to Epicurus and his sect. Atticus and Horace seem to have enjoyed from nature, and cultivated by reflection, as generous and friendly dispositions as any disciple of the austerer schools. And among the modern, Hobbes and Locke, who maintained the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... mentioned with pleased surprise in their letters home; that is, if they had any homes and ever thought of writing to them. And Cousin Willie Kerr, having got "off" at three-thirty with carte blanche for the arrangements, that night proved that the world of Epicurus had lost an artist when he had turned his talents to commerce. But of course Carlisle's triumph lay not in glowing candle-shades or masses of red and pink roses, not in delicate viands or vintages, however costly. She ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... EPICURUS. Life and writings. His successors. Virtue and vice referred by him to Pleasures and Pains calculated by Reason. Freedom from Pain the primary object. Regulation of desires. Pleasure good if not leading to pain. Bodily feeling the foundation of sensibility. Mental feelings contain memory ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... all the lids are raised, and none O'er them keeps watch." He thus in answer spake: "They shall be closed all, what-time they here From Josaphat[1] return'd shall come, and bring Their bodies, which above they now have left. The cemetery on this part obtain, With Epicurus, all his followers, Who with the body make the spirit die. Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon, Both to the question ask'd, and to the wish [2] Which thou conceal'st in silence." I replied: "I ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... regarding them as of no practical importance. This sort of agnosticism appears in Greece as early as the fifth century B.C., when Protagoras's view that "man is the measure of all things" makes extrahuman Powers superfluous. Epicurus reached a similar practical atheism apparently from a scientific view of the construction of the world. According to him there are gods, but they are otiose—living a life of happy ease, they are to be thought of as a pleasant phenomenon in the world, but ineffective as regards human ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... outcrop of evolution-doctrine in the long interval between Aristotle and Bacon seems to be very difficult, and some of the instances that have been cited strike one as forced. Epicurus and Lucretius, often called poets of evolution, both pictured animals as arising directly out of the earth, very much as Milton's lion long afterwards pawed its way out. Even when we come to Bruno who wrote that "to the sound of the harp ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... the poor alone their liquor prize, The sages join in this great sacrifice; The learned men who study Aristotle, Correct him with an explanation bottle: Praise Epicurus rather than Lysander, And Aristippus more than Alexander; The doctors too their Galen here resign, And generally prescribe specific wine; The graduate's study's grown an easy task, While for the urinal they toss the flask; The surgeon's ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... greatest advantage of our writing, which proceeds from conversation. In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours; neither did they keep the best company of theirs. Their fortune has been much like that of Epicurus, in the retirement of his gardens; to live almost unknown, and to be celebrated after their decease. I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson; and his genius lay not so much ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... half-way danger. The Filipino will be orthodox as he is now, formally, positively orthodox, or he will be cynically heterodox. As God made him, he might in time have arrived at the philosophy of Omar, "Drink, for ye know not why or when," or the identical philosophy of Epicurus, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." But the Church found him, and recognizing his peculiarities artfully substituted her own phrase, "Eat and drink in peace, for to-morrow you die in the full knowledge that pertains to your salvation." Let no proselyting ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... little Epicurean," he said at last, "and presently we shall read about Epicurus' great principles and his garden where he ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... But it certainly was not love in those nobler forms to which it has since elevated itself. Menander painted truly the degenerate world in which he lived, actuated by no mighty impulses, no noble aspirations. He was contemporary with Epicurus, and their characters had much in common; both were deficient in the inspiration of high ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,—for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace: he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus[646] relates, that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And the true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi says, "It was rumored abroad that I was penitent; ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unfeeling austerity of the Stoics by the softness of pleasurable emotions, his principle was soon disregarded; while his word, perhaps chosen in the spirit of paradox, was warmly adopted by the sensualist. Epicurus, of whom Seneca has drawn so beautiful a domestic scene, in whose garden a loaf, a Cytheridean cheese, and a draught which did not inflame thirst,[45] was the sole banquet, would have started ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... been recognised as a possible source of perplexity, affecting the ethical standard itself, both egoists and orthodox utilitarians have commonly agreed—though for different reasons—to insist that morality means the same for them both, and to hold with Epicurus that "we cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice." It is only in quite recent days that a thoroughgoing attempt has been made to revalue all the old standards of morality. And the attempt is made ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... soul enter thou not into her secrets. It is surely the forbidden tree of knowledge; I no sooner taste it, than I perceive myself naked, and stript of all things - yea even of my very self. I see myself, and the whole frame of nature, shrink into fleeting ideas, which, like Epicurus's atoms, dance about ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... celebrated, and justly so. At her receptions one always heard the best singers and players of the season, and Epicurus' soul could rest in peace, for her chef had an international reputation. Oh, remember, you music-fed ascetic, many, aye, very many, regard the transition from Tschaikowsky to terrapin, from Beethoven to burgundy with hearts aflame with anticipatory joy—and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... engaged in conversation with a friend who loves sceptical paradoxes. To my expression of the opinion that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a Providence and a future state, seem to loosen the ties of ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... softens the shades of his picture by admitting that egotism may be, and often must be, advantageous not merely to the individual but to the race. And here we find the key to one of the oddest passages in his works, that in which he attributes his inspiration to two saints, St. Augustine and St. Epicurus! ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... stands where it did, a great way off indeed, but not turned topsy-turvy by our magician's wand! Should we ever arrive there, that is, attain to a state of perfect moral restraint, we shall not be driven headlong back into Epicurus's stye for want of the only possible checks to population, vice and misery; and in proportion as we advance that way, that is, as the influence of moral restraint is extended, the necessity for vice and misery will be diminished, instead of being increased according ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the threats and promises, inhere in human nature, men truly sin, even when, without the Holy Ghost, they do virtuous works, because they do them with a wicked heart, according to Rom. 14, 23: Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. For such persons perform their works with contempt of God, just as Epicurus does not believe that God cares for him, or that he is regarded or heard by God. This contempt vitiates works seemingly virtuous, because God ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?" he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens. "My spirits have forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to whom my heart was bound." He had lost his mother and his devoted sister Wilhelmina. "You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view. I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace. Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Epicurus, with his name in Greek characters, was found in the same room, and was possibly the ornament of that part of the library where the writings in favour of his principles were kept; and it may also be supposed that some other heads of ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... mak'st philosophers; there's Epicurus And Aristippus, a material crew! Who to immoral courses would allure us By theories quite practicable too; If only from the Devil they would insure us, How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new), "Eat, drink, and love, what can the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... tell us to obey the principle itself without reference to the apparent consequences. By the bye, Paley has an express section of his work against the law of honour as a valid rule of action; but, as Cicero says of Epicurus, it matters little what he says; the question for us is quam sibi convenienter, how far consistently with himself. Now, as Sir James Mackintosh justly remarks, all that Paley says in refutation of the principle of worldly honour is hollow and unmeaning. In fact, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... death of Socrates, which last event proceeded partly from other motives, there are scarcely any instances to be met with, in ancient history, of this bigotted jealousy, with which the present age is so much infested. Epicurus lived at Athens to an advanced age, in peace and tranquillity: Epicureans[27] were even admitted to receive the sacerdotal character, and to officiate at the altar, in the most sacred rites of the established religion: ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... and of fretfulness, combined with serious, manly, and imperial cares; for the Olympus of Homer has at least this one recommendation to esteem—that it is not peopled with the merely lazy and selfish gods of Epicurus, but its inhabitants busily deliberate on the government of man, and in their debates the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... what is absolutely harmonious; all that is rough, harsh, powerful, brutal, and unexpected, throws him into convulsions. Audacity—boldness of all kinds—repels him. This Athenian of the Roman time is a true disciple of Epicurus in all matters of sight, hearing, and intelligence—a ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... still thoughtful of the care of his friends, and one of his last acts was to commend to the good offices of the Duke of Buccleugh the children of his old friend and physician, Cullen, who died only a few months before himself. "In many respects," says Lord Buchan, "Adam Smith was a chaste disciple of Epicurus as that philosopher is properly understood, and Smith's last act resembled that of Epicurus leaving as a legacy to his friend and patron the children of his Metrodorus, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... pain, loss, or grief should be shunned for virtue's sake. His followers were called Stoics, from their fashion of teaching in the porticos or porches, which in Greek were named stoai. Their great opponents were the Epicureans, or followers of a philosopher by name Epicurus, who held that as man's life is short, and as he knew not whence he came, nor whither he went, he had better make himself as happy as possible, and care for nothing else. Epicurus, indeed, declared that only virtue did make men happy; but there was nothing in his teaching ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things, and therefore he deems himself very happy if he can obtain what he then most desires. Is not now clearly enough shown to thee the form of the false goods; namely, riches, and dignity, and power, and glory, and pleasure? Concerning pleasure, Epicurus the philosopher said, when he inquired concerning all those other goods which we before mentioned: then said he, that pleasure was the highest good, because all the other goods which we before mentioned gratify the mind and delight it, but pleasure ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various |
