Epicurus Quotes

XIV. Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever age to their own; all the years that have gone ore them are an addition to their store. Unless we are most ungrateful, all those men, glorious fashioners of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way of life. By other men's labours we are led to the sight of things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and brought into light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass beyond the narrow limits of human weakness, there is a great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt32 with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics. Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters? ~ Giordano Bruno

The man who says that all events are necessitated has no ground for critizing the man who says that not all events are necessitated. For according to him this is itself a necessitated event. ~ Epicurus

The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others. It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength. ~ Epicurus

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. ~ Epicurus

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

My garden does not whet the appetite; it satisfies it. It does not provoke thirst through heedless indulgence, but slakes it by proffering its natural remedy. Amid such pleasures as these have I grown old. ~ Epicurus

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

All sensations are true; pleasure is our natural goal. ~ Epicurus

Gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it. ~ Epicurus

Any device whatever by which one frees himself from the fear of others is a natural good. ~ Epicurus

We have been born once and there can be no second birth. Fir all eternity we shall no longer be. But you, although you are not master of tomorrow, are postponing your happiness ... ~ Epicurus

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding. ~ Epicurus

It is not possible to live happily if one does not lead a beautiful, righteous, and wise life, or to lead a beautiful, righteous, and wise life if one is not happy. EPICURUS ~ Matthieu Ricard

It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate but the old man who has lived well, because the young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man has docked in the harbor, having safeguarded his true happiness. ~ Epicurus

This science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication, and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions; ~ Epicurus

Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed. ~ Epicurus

He was a devoted follower of the teachings of Epicurus - "that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily" - although I hasten to add that he was an Epicurean not in the commonly misunderstood sense, as a seeker after luxury, but in the true meaning, as a pursuer of what the Greeks call ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. He consequently avoided arguments and unpleasantness of any kind (needless to say, he was unmarried) and desired only to contemplate philosophy by day and dine by night with his cultured friends. He ~ Robert Harris

So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more. ~ Epicurus

The most important consequence of self-sufficiency is freedom. ~ Epicurus

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819] ~ Thomas Jefferson

The true Epicurean cultivates the capacity to take pleasure in simple things, while those around him chase pleasure in more things. ~ Luke Slattery

One who understands the limits of the good life knows that what eliminates the pains brought on by need and what makes the whole of life perfect is easily obtained, so that there is no need for enterprises that entail the struggle for success.19 ~ Epicurus

The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found. ~ Epicurus

As if they were our own handiwork we place a high value on our characters. ~ Epicurus

I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. (Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo) ~ Epicurus

Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city. ~ Epicurus

Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us. ~ Epicurus

It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself. ~ Epicurus

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist. ~ Epicurus

Epicurus founded a school of philosophy which placed great emphasis on the importance of pleasure. "Pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy life," he asserted, confirming what many had long thought, but philosophers had rarely accepted. Vulgar opinion at once imagined that the pleasure Epicurus had in mind involved a lot of money, sex, drink and debauchery (associations that survive in our use of the word 'Epicurean'). But true Epicureanism was more subtle. Epicurus led a very simple life, because after rational analysis, he had come to some striking conclusions about what actually made life pleasurable - and fortunately for those lacking a large income, it seemed that the essential ingredients of pleasure, however elusive, were not very expensive.

The first ingredient was friendship. 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship,' he wrote. So he bought a house near Athens where he lived in the company of congenial souls. The desire for riches should perhaps not always be understood as a simple hunger for a luxurious life, a more important motive might be the wish to be appreciated and treated nicely. We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us. Epicurus, discerning our underlying need, recognised that a handful of true friends could deliver the love and respect that ~ Alain De Botton

I would like Epicurus and Buddha to become one. ~ Osho

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

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another. ~ Epicurus

When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. ~ Epicurus

When someone admits one and rejects another which is equally in accordance with the appearances, it is clear that he has quitted all physical explanation and descended into myth. ~ Epicurus

By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It ~ Epicurus

If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires. ~ Epicurus

He who has peace of mind disturbs neither himself nor another. ~ Epicurus

Live your life without attracting attention. ~ Epicurus

Therefore, foolish is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will cause pain when it arrives but because anticipation of it is painful. ~ Epicurus

Not only was the theory of evolution not invented by Darwin himself; it wasn't invented by his Enlightenment predecessors either. It was invented by Epicurus (looking back to Democritus and others) and popularized by Lucretius. It wasn't and isn't a new, modern discovery. It is simply one part of one ancient worldview. ~ N. T. Wright

Philosophy is the art of dying.Philosophy is an activity that has always been concerned with how one seizes hold of one's mortality, and I see myself continuing a very ancient tradition that goes back to Socrates and Epicurus, which is that to be a philosopher is to try and learn how to die. In learning how to die, one learns how to live. ~ Simon Critchley

I am grateful to blessed Nature, because she made what is necessary easy to acquire and what is hard to acquire unnecessary. ~ Epicurus

Launch your boat, blessed youth, and flee at full speed from every form of culture. ~ Epicurus

Contemplating Clodia I find scarcely a drop in my heart of that compassion which Epicurus enjoins us to extend toward the erring. ~ Thornton Wilder

A free man cannot acquire many possessions, because this is no easy feat without becoming a hireling of mobs or dynasts. And yet he has a constant abundance of everything, and if he should chance to gain many possessions, he could easily portion them out so as to win his neighbors' good will. ~ Epicurus

The term "incorporeal" is properly applied only to the void, which cannot act or be acted on. Since the soul can act and be acted upon, it is corporeal. ~ Epicurus

Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity. ~ Epicurus

If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money; rather, reduce his desires. ~ Epicurus

So long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist ~ Epicurus

Is it intelligent to make ourselves miserable while living in the past, haunted by memories while being inexorably swallowed by them? Whenever we reminisce about our past life, we are advised in our tradition to be in a state of gratefulness. Be mindful of nurturing unnecessary grief and staying stuck in old pain. ~ Hiram Crespo

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.

We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality i ~ Huston Smith

Epicurus grasped how incredibly bad we are at being happy, and how talented we are at making up reasons to be miserable. We might put off our happiness, telling ourselves as we squeeze onto the Tube to go to our spirit-crushing job that at some point in the future we'll be happy, when we're promoted, when we're rich, when we're retired. Meanwhile the present moment flows by, unnoticed and unenjoyed. ~ Anonymous

Pleasure and pain moreover supply the motives of desire and of avoidance, and the springs of conduct generally. This being so, it clearly follows that actions are right and praiseworthy only as being a means to the attainment of a life of pleasure. But that which is not itself a means to anything else, but to which all else is a means, is what the Greeks term the telos, the highest, ultimate or final Good. ~ Epicurus

Once commonly called "atomism," the genealogy of atheism can be traced all the way back through the Enlightenment to Roman poets such as Lucretius and his poem De Rerum Natura, and behind that to Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus and their philosophy of atomism. It was precisely such a philosophy that contributed to the classical world a strong sense of fate and the futility of both life and human purpose. And it also provided the dark setting against which the brilliance of the hope of the good news of Jesus shone by contrast - as soon it will once again. ~ Os Guinness

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

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls. ~ Epicurus

We must meditate on what brings happiness, since when it has, it has everything, and when he misses, we do everything to have it ~ Epicurus

With the Epicureans it was never science for the sake of science but always science for the sake of human happiness. ~ Epicurus

Our weak understanding of our needs is aggravated by what Epicurus termed 'idle opinions' of those around us, which do not reflect the natural hierarchy of our needs, emphasizing luxury and riches, seldom friendship, freedom and thought. The prevalence of idle opinion is no coincidence. It is in the interest of commercial enterprises to slew the hierarchy of our needs, to promote a material vision of good and downplay an unsaleable one. ~ Alain De Botton

Without confidence, there is no friendship. ~ Epicurus

Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul. ~ Epicurus

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance. ~ Epicurus

Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little. ~ Epicurus

Usury lives in the pores of production, as it were, just as the gods of Epicurus lived in the space between the worlds. ~ Karl Marx

For times when you feel pain:
See that it doesn't disgrace you, or degrade your
intelligence - doesn't keep it from acting rationally or
unselfishly.
And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that
pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep
in mind its limits and don't magnify them in your imagination.
And keep in mind too that pain often comes in disguise
as drowsiness, fever, loss of appetite ... When you're
bothered by things like that, remind yourself: I'm giving in
to pain. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Epicurus is right, that happiness is up at auction all the time, and sold in lots to suit the purchaser whenever he bids high enough. And the price is not exorbitant: prudence to plan for the simple pleasures that can be had for the asking; resolution to cut off the pleasures that come too high; determination to amputate our reflections the instant they develop morbid symptoms, and to take an anti-toxine against fret and worry, the moment we feel the approach of their contagious atmosphere; concentration, to live in a self-chosen present from which profitless regret and unprofitable anxieties, projected from the past or borrowed from the future, are absolutely banished. ~ William De Witt Hyde

Humanity, at any rate, does have free will, and in a most ingenious way Epicurus derived free will from the doctrine of the swerve of the atom, saying in effect that the power to make a deliberate choice of action was inherent in the atom itself, which demonstrated that power by unaccountably swerving from its "normal" path. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Most beautiful is the sight of those near and dear to us when our original kinship makes us of one mind. ~ Epicurus

Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. ~ Epicurus

Alexander once made himself supremely ridiculous. Coming across Epicurus's Principal Doctrines, the most admirable of his books, as you know, with its terse presentment of his wise conclusions, he brought it into the middle of the marketplace, there burned it on a figwood fire for the sins of its author, and cast its ashes into the sea. He issued an oracle on the occasion:
"The dotard's doctrines to the flames be given."
The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquility, and independence of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms, and marvels, vain hopes and insubordinate desires, of the judgment and candor that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness. ~ Lucian Of Samosata

Never say that I have taken it, only that I have given it back. ~ Epicurus

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

N.F.F.N.S.N.C. Non Fui; Fui; Non Sum; Non Curo. "I was not, I was, I am not, I care not." It's a Latin saying found on Roman grave markers. It means I wasn't bothered about not existing before I existed and I'm not bothered about not existing now that I don't exist. ~ Epicurus

Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:
"Not the man who denies the gods worshiped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious"
Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:
"In simple words, I hate the pack of gods"
is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. ~ Karl Marx

Let no one delay the study of philosophy while young nor weary of it when old. ~ Epicurus

Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. ~ Epicurus

Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship. ~ Epicurus

A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth, and spreading fertility; it is, therefore, more delightful to give than to receive. ~ Epicurus

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one. ~ Epicurus

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. ~ Epicurus

Meditate then, on all these things, and on those things which are related to them, both day and night, and both alone and with like-minded companions. For if you will do this, you will never be disturbed while asleep or awake by imagined fears, but you will live like a god among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is in no respect like a mortal being. ~ Epicurus

Only the just man enjoys peace of mind. ~ Epicurus

We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously. ~ Epicurus

Unlike at the Academy or the Lyceum, women, some of them concubines and mistresses, as well as a few slaves, joined the conversation; further, many of the students here had arrived without academic credentials in mathematics or music, de rigueur for entry to the other Athenian schools of higher learning. Everyone in the Garden radiated earnestness and good cheer. The subject under discussion was happiness. ~ Epicurus

Death is meaningless to the living because they are living, and meaningless to the dead ... because they are dead. ~ Epicurus

The cry of the flesh bids us escape from hunger, thirst, and cold; for he who is free of these and expects to remain so might live in happiness even with Zeus. ~ Epicurus

When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the profligate or that which depends on physical enjoyment
as some think who do not understand our teachings, disagree with them, or give them an evil interpretation
but by pleasure we mean the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety. ~ Epicurus

The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind. ~ Edward Gibbon

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing . ~ Epicurus

First Theory . There is no Providence at all for anything in the Universe; all parts of the Universe, the heavens and what they contain, owe their origin to accident and chance; there exists no being that rules and governs them or provides for them. This is the theory of Epicurus ... ~ Maimonides

And in declaring true every theory that does not contravene the evidence of the senses, Epicurus does not blink the fact that the philosopher may arrive at more than one explanation for a given phenomenon - in some cases, even at explanations that are mutually exclusive or contradictory. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth . ~ Epicurus

He who doesn't find a little enough will find nothing enough. ~ Epicurus

The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it. ~ Epicurus

He who least needs tomorrow, will most gladly greet tomorrow. ~ Epicurus

Many friends are the key to happiness ~ Epicurus

Justice ... is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed. ~ Epicurus

We must laugh and philosophize and manage our households and look after our other affairs all at the same time, and never stop proclaiming the words of the true philosophy. ~ Epicurus

Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus