277 Quotes by Epicurus

Don’t fear god, Don’t worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure.

It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul.

It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.

I am grateful to blessed Nature, because she made what is necessary easy to acquire and what is hard to acquire unnecessary.

It is not possible for a man to banish all fear of the essential questions of life unless he understands the nature of the universe and unless he banishes all consideration that the fables told about the universe could be true. Therefore a man cannot enjoy full happiness, untroubled by turmoil, unless he acts to gain knowledge of the nature of things.

The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others. It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength.

If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquillity.”41 In other words, a person who doubts his senses will either lose contact with the reality of the surrounding world, like the Skeptics, and become psychologically isolated and insecure, or he will fall prey, as do the religionists, to theological explanations which do not allay anxiety but foment it.

Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man.

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.