Epicurus quotes - page 3

Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefulness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another. (31) (Epicurus)
Why should I fear death If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not. View quote
Epicurus
I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know. View quote
Epicurus
Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest. View quote
Epicurus
Only the just man enjoys peace of mind. View quote
Epicurus
A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord and tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of night and day. View quote
Epicurus
Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss. View quote
Epicurus
It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life. (5) View quote
Epicurus
A strict belief in fate is the worst kind of slavery on the other hand, there is comfort in the thought that God will be moved by our prayers. View quote
Epicurus
Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily. Epicurus taught Pleasure, defined as freedom from pain, is the highest good. View quote
Epicurus
It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself. (Epicurus)
There is nothing to fear from gods, There is nothing to feel in death, Good can be attained, Evil can be endured. View quote
Epicurus
Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed. View quote
Epicurus
I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome. View quote
Epicurus
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter a. View quote
Epicurus
Where without any change in circumstances the things held to be just by law are seen not to correspond with the concept of justice in actual practice, such laws are not really just. View quote
Epicurus
We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need. View quote
Epicurus
We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously. View quote
Epicurus
Virtue consisteth of three parts, - temperance, fortitude, and justice. View quote
Epicurus
We know, that of all living beings man is the best formed, and, as the gods belong to this number, they must have a human form. ... I do not mean to say that the gods have body and blood in them; but I say that they seem as if they had bodies with blood in them. . ., Epicurus, for whom hidden things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his finger, teaches us that gods are not generally visible, but that they are intelligible; that they are not bodies having a certain solidity . . . but that we can recognize them by their passing images; that as there are atoms enough in the infinite space to produce such images, these are produced before us . . . and make us realize what are these happy, immortal beings. View quote
Epicurus
For if they imagine infinite spaces of time before the world, during which God could not have been idle, in like manner they may conceive outside the world infinite realms of space, in which, if any one says that the Omnipotent cannot hold His hand from working, will it not follow that they must adopt Epicurus' dream of innumerable worlds? with this difference only, that he asserts that they are formed and destroyed by the fortuitous movements of atoms, while they will hold that they are made by God's hand, if they maintain that, throughout the boundless immensity of space, stretching interminably in every direction round the world, God cannot rest, and that the worlds which they suppose Him to make cannot be destroyed. ... there is no place beside the world ...no time before the world. (Epicurus)