• Acted: 3th Century BC
  • Lived: 341-270 BC
  • School: Epicurean
  • Main Interests: Ethics, Epistemology, Physics, Theology
  • Influences: Plato, Aristotle, Democritus
  • Location: Athens

Quotes

It is not possible to live a pleasant life without living wisely, honorably and righteously, and it is not possible to live wisely, honorably and righteously without living pleasantly.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 140

Live quietly, be unnoticed. Avoid publicity.

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EPICURUS

Epicurea, 551

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 122

The desires that do not bring pain or sorrow if they are not satisfied are not necessary.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 46, 26

If you want to make a man rich, do not give him money but take away from his desires.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΙΖ, 24

We should pursue the things that bring happiness, for when happiness is present we have everything, but when it is absent we do everything to possess it.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 122

The man who lives among immortal goods does not resemble in anything a mortal existence.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 135

The blessed and immortal being is itself free from trouble and does not cause trouble for anyone else. Therefore it is not constrained either by anger or favor.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 139

Future is neither entirely ours nor entirely strange to us, thus we cannot even expect it to come or despair that it will certainly not come.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 130

The wise man neither quits living, nor is afraid of not living because it is not unpleasant to him to live, and he doesn’t consider not living bad.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 126

Death the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death does not come, and, when death comes, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

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EPICURUS

Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων, Διογένης Λαέρτιος: Ι, 125

The blessed character has the charm of making the necessary things easy to obtain, and of making the hard to obtain unnecessary.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΙΖ, 23

He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΙΖ, 30

I spit upon luxurious pleasures not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΙΖ, 34

Pleasure is useful when we are in pain from its absence. When we are not afflicted by that and we are sane, then we don’t need pleasure at all. For it is not physical pleasure that brings us injustice from outside, but the desire for vain glories.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΙΖ, 35

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΡΙΗ, 30

Laws were established in favor of wise men, not to prevent them from wronging, but from being wronged.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΜΓ, 139

We have been born once and there can be no second birth. For all eternity we shall no longer be. But you, although you are not master of tomorrow, are postponing your happiness. We waste away our lives in delaying, and each of us dies without having enjoyed leisure.

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EPICURUS

Ιωάννου Στοβαίου Ανθολόγιον: ΙΣΤ, 28

Biography

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded the school of Epicureanism. According to Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy is to attain happiness, characterized by ataraxia (peace and freedom from fear), aponia (the absence of pain) and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil. Death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared. The gods do not reward or punish humans, the universe is infinite and eternal, and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.