Epictetus Quotes

Put the dwarf within you to sleep.

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication? p. 112

I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Unbelievable! To hear my father grouped together with Elvis Presley, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, it's a dream.

It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. Any existing distinction between the wise and the stupid, between the rich and the poor, comes down to a matter of education.

When someone says 'my people' with a specific stress on the blackness of those people, they are after kingdoms and permanently child-like slaves. 'The people' are never going to rise above the status of 'the people'. They are going to be told what is good for them by the 'mother' and the 'father'.

Did I? That was extremely immodest and foolish of me, my apologies. I would never dare to be so presumptuous. I am only interested in the legacy my father has left behind, and I would like to work towards giving it strength and respect for as long as I live.

As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

... we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he had his substance from nothing.

Ghalib, we are from the sacred land of Turan,
Undoubtedly we are of glorious lineage,
We are of Turkish descent
And the chiefs of the tribe were our forefathers,
We are Arabs, belonging to the tribe of Turks
And in perfection we are ten times better than the moon.

He sent Sa’d b. Zayd al-Ashhali to Manāt in al-Mushallal and he pulled it down.

O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?