Epictetus Quotes

What is yours is to play the assigned part well. But to choose it belongs to someone else

I love the process of acting, simply because I like to play make believe. But for me, it is purely make believe and it is a process of playing.

I don't think there's any accidents in my life.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

We're on some path that's set since we're born, but I still believe we can change some things. So I believe in my faith, but I still don't believe in my fate.

Do you believe you can change your destiny?' he (Sajhë) said, seeking an answer. Alice found herself nodding. 'Otherwise, what's the point? If we are simply walking a path preordained, then all the experiences that make us who we are - love, grief, joy, learning, changing - would count for nothing.

Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not.

I come down on the side of free will but I have sympathy for those who believe in fate because there is something about life which we feel we have no control over.

I've always been an actor. That's my job — I can be anything you want me to be.

Even my life's not normal because I'm acting, right?

I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.

I have some friends who are actors. I've watched them work. And I would say that of all the arts, acting is the most grueling, thankless. Never apologize for your work.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?

I wouldnt call acting a job - its a pleasure. I love getting to play different characters, getting to play dress up, and getting paid for it.

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.

If you want guarantees in life, then you don't want life. You want rehearsals for a script that's already been written. Life by its nature cannot have guarantees, or its whole purpose is thwarted.

Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of card. Once we have them, we are free to play them as we choose.

Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well. The choice of the cast is Another's.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

You don't have that much choice in your life, which is one of the big lessons I've learned. I was going to be a designer whether I wanted to be a designer or not.

There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is 'the product of destiny,' or 'formed by fate,' or 'predestined for a certain life.' I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.