"Quotations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control
are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are
our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation,
command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
-- Epictetus, Enchiridion (55-135b.c.)


Through this kinship with the flesh, some of us inclining to it
become like wolves, faithless and treacherous and mischievous: some
become like lions, savage and untamed; but the greater part of us
become foxes and other worse animals. For what else is a slanderer and
a malignant man than a fox, or some other more wretched and meaner
animal? See, then, and take
-- Epictetus, The Discourses (55-135b.c.)


For it is always true that to whatever point the perfecting of anything
leads us, progress is an approach toward this point.
-- Epictetus, The Discourses (55-135b.c.)


Because the gods
have given the vine, or wheat, we sacrifice to them: but because
they have produced in the human mind that fruit by which they designed
to show us the truth which relates to happiness, shall we not thank
God for this?
-- Epictetus, The Discourses (55-135b.c.)


From everything which is or happens in the world, it is easy to
praise Providence, if a man possesses these two qualities, the faculty
of seeing what belongs and happens to all persons and things, and a
grateful disposition. If he does not possess these two qualities,
one man will not see the use of things which are and which happen;
another will not be thankful for them, even if he does know them.
-- Epictetus, The Discourses (55-135b.c.)


But God has introduced man to be a
spectator of God and of His works; and not only a spectator of them,
but an interpreter. For this reason it is shameful for man to begin
and to end where irrational animals do, but rather he ought to begin
where they begin, and to end where nature ends in us; and nature
ends in contemplation and understanding, in a way of life
conformable to nature. Take care then not to die without having been
spectators of these things.
-- Epictetus, The Discourses (55-135b.c.)


For what is the end proposed in reasoning?