277 Quotes by Epicurus

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

The term “incorporeal” is properly applied only to the void, which cannot act or be acted on. Since the soul can act and be acted upon, it is corporeal.

This science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication, and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions;.

We must meditate on what brings happiness, since when it has, it has everything, and when he misses, we do everything to have it.

We must laugh and philosophize and manage our households and look after our other affairs all at the same time, and never stop proclaiming the words of the true philosophy.

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

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

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn’t know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

Pleasure and pain moreover supply the motives of desire and of avoidance, and the springs of conduct generally. This being so, it clearly follows that actions are right and praiseworthy only as being a means to the attainment of a life of pleasure. But that which is not itself a means to anything else, but to which all else is a means, is what the Greeks term the telos, the highest, ultimate or final Good.