Date finished 17 Aug 2020
Recommendation: 8/10
Over 2000 years have passed since Epicurus wrote these teachings, yet they still provide great insight into how to live happily. The best are: “Nothing satisfies him for whom enough is too little”; “if you wish to make Pythocles rich, be not adding to do his money but subtracting from his desires” and “the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom”.
Below are the quotes that stood out.
“Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends”.
“For most men rest is stagnation and activity madness.”
“No one when he sees evil deliberately chooses it, but is enticed by it as being good in comparison with a greater evil and so pursues it.”
“It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but an old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old-age as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped he has brought into safe harbourage in his grateful recollections.”
“The veneration of the wise man is a great blessing to those who venerate him”.
“It is not so much our friend’s help that helps us as the confidence of their help.”
“We should not spoil what we have by desiring what we have not, but remember that what we do have is the gift of fortune.”
“The greatest blessing is created and enjoyed at the same moment”.
“We must release ourselves from the prison of affairs and politics.”
“Frugality too has a limit, and the man who disregards it is in like case with him who errs through excess.”
“Praise from others must come unasked: we must concern ourselves with the healing of our own lives.”
“A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs, yet it possesses all things in unfailing abundance; and if by chance it obtains many possessions, it is easy to distribute them so as to win the gratitude of neighbours.”
“Nothing is sufficient for him to whom what is sufficient seems little”.
“Let nothing be done in your life, which will cause you fear if it becomes known to your neighbour.”
“Every desire must be confronted with this question; what will happen to me, if the object of my desire is accomplished and what if it is not?”
“The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom”.
“Sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it has not harmed him.” - can’t say that I agree with this (!) such a strange saying that it’s worth noting.
“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.”
“He who least needs to-morrow, will most gladly go to meet to-morrow.”
“The laws exist for the sake of the wise, not that they may not do wrong, but that they may not suffer it.”
“A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear.”
“The wise man is little inconvenienced by fortune: things that matter are under the control of his own judgement and reason. No greater pleasure could be derived from an eternal life than is actually derived from the existence we can see to be infinite.”
“The fool’s life is ungracious and fearful: it is directed totally at the future.”
“If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinions, you will never be rich.”
“For many, the acquisition of riches has not made an end of troubles, but an alteration.”
“Ungoverned anger begets madness.”
“Before you eat and drink anything, consider carefully who you eat and drink it with: feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf.”
“If you wish to make Pythocles rich, be not adding to do his money but subtracting from his desires.”
“No one parts from life in a state any different from that in which he entered it…No one parts from life any different from how he was born.”
“For the guilty to remain hidden is possible; to be confident in such concealment is impossible.” [Seneca’s gloss is “Good fortune frees many men from punishment, but none from the fear of it.”]