Epicurus Quotes - Page 4

What will happen to me if that which this desire seeks is achieved, and what if it is not?

I spit upon luxurious pleasures, not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Let nothing be done in your life, which will cause you fear if it becomes known to your neighbor.

For a wrongdoer to be undetected is difficult; and for him to have confidence that his concealment will continue is impossible.

The wise man neither rejects life nor fears death... just as he does not necessarily choose the largest amount of food, but, rather, the pleasantest food, so he prefers not the longest time, but the most pleasant.

The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

Why are you afraid of death? Where you are, death is not. Where death is, you are not. What is it that you fear.

The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.

He who understands the limits of life knows that it is easy to obtain that which removes the pain of want and makes the whole of life complete and perfect. Thus he has no longer any need of things which involve struggle.

All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

The mind that is much elevated and insolent with prosperity, and cast down with adversity, is generally abject and base.

The words of that philosopher who offers no therapy for human suffering are empty and vain.

Don't fear god, Don't worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure

Remember that the future is neither ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither count on it as sure to come nor abandon hope of it as certain not to be.

An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.

Of all the gifts that wise Providence grants us to make life full and happy, friendship is the most beautiful.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.

Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.