Top 40 famous quotes by Epicurus

We review great famous quotes from the hedonistic genius of Ancient Greece.

Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC), better known as Epicurus of Samos, was an exceptional Greek philosopher and thinker, pioneer of the school that bore his name, Epicureanism.

His theories developed the postulates of atomism and rational hedonism. Always in search of pleasure, he associated this sensation with discretion, austerity and prudence.

Although most of his writings were not preserved, his ideas reached us through the Latin poet Lucretius and some missives of Diogenes Laertius.

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Famous quotes by Epicurus of Samos

In this article we are going to approach the life and work of this phenomenal Greek thinker through the best phrases of Epicurus of Samos. They are famous quotes that he pronounced in some of his works, or that others gave him afterwards.

1. Goods are for those who know how to enjoy them.

It is of no use to possess riches if one is not able to be happier.

2. The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom.

Not to depend on anything or anyone guarantees us to be able to be masters of our own existence.

All friendship is desirable in itself.

A great lover of interpersonal relationships, Epicurus described the joy of having a good friend.

4. Do you want to be rich? Then do not strive to increase your goods, but to decrease your greed.

An ode to austerity and discretion.

5. Is God willing to prevent evil but cannot? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he unwilling to prevent evil, though he could do so? Then he is wicked; is he willing and able to prevent it? If so, why is there evil in the world, is it not because he is not willing and able to prevent it?

A reflection that has reached our days and that puts in check the idea of a divine being.

6. He lives hidden.

In praise of discretion, taken to the extreme.

7. Philosophy is an activity that with discourse and reasoning seeks a happy life.

His humble definition of philosophy, far from any transcendental pretension.

8. Nothing is enough for those for whom little is enough.

One of those phrases of Epicurus that invites us to reflect.

9. Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of all preference and all aversion. It is the absence of Pain in the body and restlessness in the soul.

His definition of pleasure: the absence of pain.

10. He who forgets the goods enjoyed in the past is already old today.

Memory is inherent to happiness.

11. We should seek someone to eat and drink with before we seek something to eat and drink, for to eat alone is to lead the life of a lion or a wolf.

The company of good and kind people is the reason for living.

12. He who is not content with small things, will not be content with anything.

On austerity.

13. He is impious, not he who suppresses the Gods, but he who conforms them to the opinions of mortals.

The human notion of God will always be poor and incomplete.

14. Gods? Perhaps there are. I neither affirm nor deny it, because I do not know, nor have I the means of knowing. But I know, because this is what life teaches me daily, that if they exist, they neither care nor worry about us.

A skeptical view of the existence of divine entities.

15. We are not so much in need of help from friends as we are in need of the certainty of help.

Knowing that someone is there to help us is certainly comforting.

16. He who says that everything happens by necessity can object nothing to the one who denies that everything happens by necessity, for this very thing affirms that it happens by necessity.

A convoluted explanation of the great Epicurus.

17. Just as the wise man does not choose the most abundant food, but the tastiest, so he does not seek the longest life, but the most intense.

A great reflection on how to live life intensely.

18. We consider many pains better than pleasures because a greater pleasure is obtained for us.

On the pleasure and how to take advantage of it.

19. It is absurd to ask the gods for what everyone is capable of procuring for himself.

Another example of his skepticism about divine miracles.

20. Philosophy is an activity which by discourse and reasoning procures a happy life.

On the ultimate goal of this essential discipline of knowledge.

21. The fool, among other evils, possesses this one: he always tries to start his life from scratch.

In other words, he does not learn from experience.

22. He who does not consider what he has as the greatest wealth, is unhappy, even if he is master of the world.

Grateful people are the happiest.

23. Death is a chimera: for as long as I exist, death does not exist; and when death exists, I no longer exist.

One of Epicurus' most famous and remembered phrases.

24. Accustom yourself to think that death is nothing to us, because all good and evil reside in sensations, and death consists precisely in being deprived of sensation. Therefore, the right conviction that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life agreeable to us; not because it adds to it an indefinite time, but because it deprives us of an inordinate desire for immortality.

Exceptional aphorism of Epicurus about non-existence.

25. The wise man will not strive to master the art of rhetoric and will not intervene in politics or want to be king.

All artifice and social recognition are superfluous, according to the Greek philosopher.

26. The insatiable is not the belly, as the vulgar asserts, but the false belief that the belly needs infinite satiety.

It is our perception of needs that creates the need.

27. No one, seeing evil, chooses it, but allows himself to be deceived by it, as if it were a good in relation to a worse evil.

On the imperceptible seduction of evil.

28. He who one day forgets how much fun he has had has become old that very day.

A sample of his vitalistic hedonism.

29. Retreat into yourself, especially when you need company.

The need to share time with other people is a symptom of weakness.

30. Everyone leaves life as if they had just been born.

Helpless, unprotected and naked. Thus ends our existence.

31. Inordinate anger breeds madness.

Self-control, a basic trait for happiness, according to the great Epicurus.

32. Necessity is within evil, but there is no cause, dianoetic, of living with necessity.

Austerity made a famous quotation.

33. Pleasure is the beginning and the end of a happy life.

One of Epicurus' phrases in which he shows us the responsibility of having a carefree life.

34. The greatest fruit of justice is serenity of soul.

When you have nothing to regret, you can sleep with all the peace of mind in the world.

35. He who has least need of tomorrow is the one who advances most willingly toward it.

Another quote about austerity, one of the greatest virtues a person can possess.

36. We should meditate, therefore, on the things that bring us happiness, because, if we enjoy it, we possess everything and, if we lack it, we do everything possible to obtain it.

Extract from one of his letters to Meneceus.

37. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

Carpe diem: let us enjoy the moment.

38. Thus, death is real neither for the living nor for the dead, since it is far from the former and, when it approaches the latter, they have already disappeared.

Another reflection on death.

39. Let no one, while he is young, be reluctant to philosophize, nor, when he grows old, grow weary of philosophizing. For, in order to attain the health of the soul, one is never too old or too young.

His idea of philosophy, in a missive to Meneceus.

40. That is why I take pleasure in remembering the egregious sentences of Epicurus, because I see that those who turn to them with the vile hope of covering up their vices, will understand that wherever they go they must live honestly. (Seneca)

The great Seneca, speaking of the protagonist of the post: Epicurus.