If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.
The mind that is much elevated and insolent with prosperity, and cast down with adversity, is generally abject and base.
The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.
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.
All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help.
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss.
I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.
Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.
Launch your boat, blessed youth, and flee at full speed from every form of culture.
Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily. Epicurus taught: Pleasure, defined as freedom from pain, is the highest good.
A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear.
We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously.
Man was not intended by nature to live in communities and be civilized.
We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing.
Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.
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.
Don’t fear god, Don’t worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure.
A blessed and indestructible being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; so he is free from anger and partiality, for all such things imply weakness.