Epictetus

"Τῷ λογικῷ ζώῳ μόνον ἀφόρητόν ἐστι τὸ ἄλογον, τὸ δ᾿ εὔλογον φορητόν."

"Dont explain your philosophy. Embody it."

"You become what you give your attention to."

"Epictetus is a thinker we cannot forget, once we have encountered him, because he gets under our skin. He provokes and he irritates, but he deals so trenchantly with life’s everyday challenges that no one who knows his work can simply dismiss it as theoretically invalid or practically useless. In times of stress, as modern Epictetans have attested, his recommendations make their presence felt."

"Ἐπὶ παντὸς πρόχειρα ἑκτέον ταῦτα· "Ἄγου δέ μ᾿, ὦ Ζεῦ, καὶ σὺ καὶ ἡ Πεπρωμένη, ὅποι ποθ᾿ ὑμῖν εἰμι διατεταγμένος· ὡς ἕψομαί γ’ ἄοκνος· ἢν δὲ μὴ θέλω κακὸς γενόμενος, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἕψομαι." "Ὅστις δ᾿ ἀνάγκῃ συγκεχώρηκεν καλῶς, σοφὸς παρ᾿ ἡμῖν καὶ τὰ θεῖ᾿ ἐπίσταται." "Ἀλλ’, ὦ Κρίτων, εἰ ταύτῃ τοῖς θεοῖς φίλον, ταύτῃ γινέσθω." "Ἐμὲ δὲ Ἄνυτος καὶ Μέλητος ἀποκτεῖναι μὲν δύνανται, βλάψαι δὲ οὔ."

"The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life."

"Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore, give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions, and determine to pay the price for a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast... and one day you will build something that endures, something worthy of your potential."

"I have not composed these Words of Epictetus as one might be said to "compose" books of this kind, nor have I of my own act published them to the world; indeed, I acknowledge that I have not "composed" them at all. But whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech. They are, accordingly, as you might expect, such remarks as one man might make off-hand to another, not such as he would compose for men to read in after time."

"The phenomenon of the will [in Epictetus ] [...] a different mental ability whose chief characteristic is that it speaks an imperative even when it commands nothing but our ability to think. The goal is to annihilate reality insofar it concerns me."