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How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life

Book by Epictetus · 9 quotes · Freedom, Love, Association

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How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life Quotes

“If on the other hand, they identify their good and interests with things that are external and outside the sphere of will, they are bound to be impeded and frustrated, subservient to those who have authority over the things that you have admired and feared. They are also bound to be utterly irreverent since they think that God has a grudge against them, and to be unfair, since they always grab more for themselves; and they are bound to lack self-respect and generosity.”

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“Good introduced human beings to be students of himself and his works, and not merely students but also interpreters of these things. It is wrong, therefore, for us to begin and end where the nonrational animals do. We should rather begin where they do but end where nature has ended in our case. Nature ended at studying and paying attention to things and a way of life in harmony with itself. See to it then, that you do not die without having studied these things.”

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“Do not desire anything that is not your own, because nothing is your own that is not up to you to procure or to secure whenever you want. Keep your hands right off it, but first and foremost keep your desire well away. Otherwise you are giving yourself up to slavery and submitting your neck to the yoke, if ever you admire what is not your own and feel strongly for things that are dependent on others and are perishable.”

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“And when you call on some high official, imagine that you will not find him at home, that you will be shut out, that the door will be slammed in your face, and that he will ignore you. But if, in spite of all this, you really have to go, accept it and go without ever telling yourself, "it was not worth all that". That's what an ordinary person would do, someone upset by mere circumstances.”

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