The Art of Happiness
Epicurus
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The purpose of all knowledge, metaphysical as well as scientific, is to achieve what
“The most important consequence of self-sufficiency is freedom.”
“if a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquillity”
“Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man masters all these passions by means of reason.”
“With the Epicureans it was never science for the sake of science but always science for the sake of human happiness.”
“The conquest of fear, especially fear of unaccountable divine beings who meddle in nature at will, means a reduction in the sum total of human pain and suffering and opens the door to the calm acceptance of a new picture of the world—a world in which nature is autonomous and where there are ideal beings who never meddle.”
“The risings and settings of the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies may come about from the lighting up and quenching of their fires…; for nothing in our sensory experience runs counter to this hypothesis. Or the said effects may be caused by the emergence of these bodies from a point above the earth and again by the earth’s position in front of them; for nothing in our sensory experience is against this.45 Here two alternative explanations of “risings and settings” are offered; both are of equal value and equally true, since neither is contradicted by anything in our experience. On the contrary, we have all seen fires die down from lack of fuel, and lights obscured or blacked out by objects coming in front of them.”
“If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquillity.”41 In other words, a person who doubts his senses will either lose contact with the reality of the surrounding world, like the Skeptics, and become psychologically isolated and insecure, or he will fall prey, as do the religionists, to theological explanations which do not allay anxiety but foment it.”
“We must laugh and philosophize and manage our households and look after our other affairs all at the same time, and never stop proclaiming the words of the true philosophy.”
“The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others. It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength.”
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Book Keywords:
quote, epicureanism, epicurus, philosophy
