Epicurus quotes

To eat and drink without a friend is to devour like the lion and the wolf.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.

A strong belief in fate is the worst kind of slavery; on the other hand, there is a comfort in the thought that God will be moved by our prayers.

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

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men in their various relations with each other, in whatever circumstances they may be, that they will neither injure nor be injured.

The summit of pleasure is the elimination of all that gives pain.

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily. Epicurus taught: Pleasure, defined as freedom from pain, is the highest good.

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

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

Without confidence, there is no friendship.

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.

What men fear is not that death is annihilation but that it is not.

No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures are gained bring pains many times greater than the pleasures.

The pleasant life is not produced by continual drinking and dancing, nor sexual intercourse, nor rare dishes of sea food and other delicacies of a luxurious table. On the contrary, it is produced by sober reasoning which examines the motives for every choice and avoidance, driving away beliefs which are the source of mental disturbances.

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

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

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

Live your life without attracting attention.

Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss.

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

Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth .

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.

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.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

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

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

Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest.

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

Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.

Tranquil pleasure constitutes human beings' supreme good

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.

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

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

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

Thanks be to blessed Nature that she has made what is necessary easy to obtain, and what is not easy unnecessary.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord and tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of night and day.

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

Happiness is man's greatest aim in life. Tranquility and rationality are the cornerstones of happiness.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.

The wise man thinks of fame just enough to avoid being despised.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

The honor paid to a wise man is a great good for those who honor him.

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.

Only the just man enjoys peace of mind.

Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.

Men, believing in myths, will always fear something terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable . . . Men base all these fears not on mature opinions, but on irrational fancies, that they are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of mind lies in being delivered from all these fears.

A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear.

There is nothing to fear from gods, There is nothing to feel in death, Good can be attained, Evil can be endured.

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

Any man who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

Freedom is the greatest fruit of self sufficiency.

The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.

In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns most.

There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number... are borne on far out into space.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

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.

If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of Philosophy.

But the universe is infinite.

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

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

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.

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.

Most men are in a coma when they are at rest and mad when they act.

Virtue consisteth of three parts,--temperance, fortitude, and justice.

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

We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing.

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.

The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship.

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

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

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

The greater the Difficulty the more Glory in surmounting it, and the loss of false Joys secures to us a much better Possession of real ones.

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

There is nothing terrible in life for the man who realizes there is nothing terrible in death.

The guilty man may escape, but he cannot be sure of doing so.

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.

If death causes you no pain when you're dead, it is foolish to allow the fear of it to cause you pain now.

The things you really need are few and easy to come by; but the things you can imagine you need are infinite, and you will never be satisfied.

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

Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.

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

Do everything like someone is gazing at you.

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

Men are so thoughtless, nay, so mad, that some, through fear of death, force themselves to die.

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.

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

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

The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.

Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

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

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

We must consider both the ultimate end and all clear sensory evidence, to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

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

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.

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

Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?

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

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

All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help

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

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

He who needs riches least, enjoys riches most.

Man was not intended by nature to live in communities and be civilized.

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

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

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

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

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

Being happy is knowing how to be content with little

We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.

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.

The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.

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