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What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.

Epictetus

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Epictetus
Philosopher
Epictetus of Hierapolis
Way
Things
Think
Thinking
Concerns
Life
Concern
People
Motivational
Rather
Inspirational

More quotes by Epictetus

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Freedom isn't the right or ability to do whatever you please. Freedom comes from understanding the limits of our own power and the inherent limits set in place by nature. By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, you become truly free.
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You become what you give your attention to...If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest.
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The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.
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What hurts this person is not the occurrence itself, for another person might not feel oppressed by this situation at all. What is hurting this person is the response he or she has uncritically adopted. It is not a demonstration of kindness or friendship to the people we care about to join them in indulging in wrongheaded, negative feelings.
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An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.
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We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.
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If you see anybody wail and complain, call him a slave, though he be clad in purple.
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You lose only the things you have
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I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later.
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If thou rememberest that God standeth by to behold and visit all that thou doest whether in the body or in the soul, thou surely wilt not err in any prayer or deed and thou shalt have God to dwell with thee.
Epictetus
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When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, 'if Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.'
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Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems
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Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.
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And have you not received faculties which will enable you to bear all that happens to you? Have you not received greatness of spirit? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?
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What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction.
Epictetus
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Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.
Epictetus
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There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus
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Focus not on what he or she does, but on keeping to your higher purpose. Your own purpose should seek harmony with nature itself. For this is the true road to freedom.
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If anyone should tell you that a particular person has spoken critically of you, don't bother with excuses or defenses. Just smile and reply, I guess that person doesn't know about all my other faults. Otherwise, he wouldn't have mentioned only these.
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I am always content with what happens for I know that what God chooses is better than what I choose.
Epictetus