Discourses and Enchiridion Quotes

“It is not things that upset us, but our judgments about things.”

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

“It is difficulties that show what men are.”

“Although life is a matter of indifference, the use which you make of it is not a matter of indifference.”

“What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.”

“For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.”

“To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.”

“Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly within our own control.”

“In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.”

“Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.”

“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?”

“When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?”

“No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

“Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.”

“Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.”

“Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.”

“Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these about whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?”

“If it is my interest to have a farm, it is my interest to take it away from my neighbour; if it is my interest to have a cloak, it is my interest also to steal it from a bath. This is the source of wars, seditions, tyrannies, plots.”

“If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled?”

“If the room is smoky, if only moderately, I will stay; if there is too much smoke I will go. Remember this, keep a firm hold on it, the door is always open.”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.”

“For human beings, the measure of every action is the impression of the senses.”