While I am working up a post on the Five Foot Bookshelf of the Harvard Classics and my return to it, I wanted to throw some quotes out there from Epictetus. It’s a fantastically philosophical book, one I must force myself to read slowly and just a couple pages at a time, but its tremendously rewarding.

Quote 1

The present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has.

Quote 2

Throwing away then all things, hold to these only which are few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain...

Quote 3

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains…it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility.

~ The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

~ Theodore Roosevelt