Epictetus Quotes

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.

You can be happy if you know this secret: Some things are within your power to control and some things are not.

Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.

The man of control lives in choice, and the man of understanding lives in choicelessness.

I learned long ago to focus on things you can control and don't even pay attention to things you don't.

I don't ever feel the need to escape.

I have learned to not worry about things I can't control.

I'm very happy with my life. I am what I am. I don't worry about anything that I can't control. That's a really good lesson in life.

One of the things I noticed in my career that gave me a lot of happiness early on was realising we don't have any control.

Freedom is not overcoming what you think stands in your way. It is understanding that what is in your way is part of the way.

The source of a true smile is an awakened mind. Smiling helps you approach the day with gentleness and understanding.

I will not be afraid because I understand ... And understanding is happiness.

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.

Whether you are happy or whether you are sad, it is wise to remember you are really in process.

Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotion, because the body always follows the mind.

I finally found me a cloud to float on.

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

We feel good about ourselves to the exact degree we feel in control of our lives.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

The more we control our mind, the more our inner peace increases and the happier we become

The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.

We can be unhappy about many things, but jy can still be there... It is important to become aware that at every moment of our life we have an opportunity to choose joy... It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom to love.

Meditation means: put the mind aside and watch. The first step - LOVE YOURSELF - will help you tremendously. By loving yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning.

By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.