Epicurus | Vatican Sayings
Epicurus | Vatican Sayings
The “Vatican Sayings” is a collection of quotes of Epicurus (341–270 BC) and other Epicureans preserved in a 14th century manuscript from the Vatican Library. Some sayings repeat what was published “Principal Doctrines” (PD).
There are not many works written by Epicurus , the Ancient Greek philosopher, or Epicureans extant today.
Only 3 letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and 2 collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings.
Epicurus teachings are mostly known through quotes in the works of other Hellenic and Ancient Roman authors.
Here you can read online what are believed to be said by Epicurus.
1. (PD 1) 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.
2. (PD 2) Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.
3. (PD 4) Continuous bodily pain does not last long; instead, pain, if extreme, is present a very short time, and even that degree of pain which slightly exceeds bodily pleasure does not last for many days at once. Diseases of long duration allow an excess of bodily pleasure over pain.
4. Pain is easily disdained; for a pain that causes intense suffering is brief, whereas a pain that lingers in the flesh is weak and feeble.
5. (PD 5) It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.
6. (PD 35) It is impossible for a man who secretly violates the terms of the agreement not to harm or be harmed to feel confident that he will remain undiscovered, even if he has already escaped ten thousand times; for until his death he is never sure that he will not be detected.
7. It is easy to commit an injustice undetected, but impossible to be sure that you have escaped detection.
8. (PD 15) The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.
9. Compulsion is a bad thing, but there is no compulsion to live under compulsion.
10. Remember that you are mortal and have a limited time to live and have devoted yourself to discussions on nature for all time and eternity and have seen “things that are now and are to me come and have been.”
11. For most people, to be quiet is to be numb and to be active is to be frenzied.
12. (PD 17) The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance.
13. (PD 37) Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.
14. We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more. You don't control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things off, and each of us dies without truly living.
15. We treasure our character as our own, whether or not it is worthy in itself or admired by others; and so we must honour our fellow men, if they are good.
16. No one who sees what is bad chooses it willingly; instead he is lured into seeing it as good compared to what is even worse, and thus he is trapped.
17. It is not the young man who is most happy, but the old man who has lived beautifully; for despite being at his very peak the young man stumbles around as if he were of many minds, whereas the old man has settled into old age as if in a harbour, secure in his gratitude for the good things he was once unsure of.
18. The passion of love disappears without the opportunity to see each other and talk and be together.
19. He who forgets the good things he had yesterday becomes an old man today.
20. (PD 29) Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary; and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion.
21. Nature must be persuaded, not forced. And we will persuade nature by fulfilling the necessary desires, and the natural desires too if they cause no harm, but sharply rejecting the harmful desires.
22. (PD 19) Unlimited time and limited time afford an equal amount of pleasure, if we measure the limits of that pleasure by reason.
23. Every friendship is an excellence in itself, even though it begins in mutual advantage.
24. Dreams have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power; instead they come from the impact of images.
25. Poverty is great wealth if measured by the goals of nature, and wealth is abject poverty if not limited by the goals of nature.
26. Understand that short discourses and long discourses both achieve the same thing.
27. Whereas other pursuits yield their fruit only to those who have practiced them to perfection, in the love and practice of wisdom knowledge is accompanied by delight; for here enjoying comes along with learning, not afterward.
28. Those who grasp after friendship and those who shrink from it are not worthy of approval; on the other hand, it is necessary to risk some pleasure for the pleasures of friendship.
29. Speaking freely in my study of what is natural, I prefer to prophesize about what is good for all people, even if no one will understand me, rather than to accept common opinions and thereby reap the showers of praise that fall so freely from the great mass of men.
30. Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink.
31. It is possible to provide security against other things, but as far as death is concerned, we men all live in a city without walls.
32. Honouring a sage is itself a great good to the one who honours.
33. The body cries out to not be hungry, not be thirsty, not be cold. Anyone who has these things, and who is confident of continuing to have them, can rival the gods for happiness.
34. The use of friends is not that they are useful, but that we can trust in their usefulness.
35. Don't ruin the things you have by wanting what you don't have, but realize that they too are things you once did wish for.
36. Epicurus's life when compared to that of other men with respect to gentleness and self-sufficiency might be thought a mere legend.
37. Nature is weak in the face of what is bad, not what is good; for it is kept whole by pleasures and broken down by pains.
38. Anyone with many good reasons to leave this life is an altogether worthless person.
39. A friend is not one who is constantly seeking some benefit, nor one who never connects friendship with utility; for the former trades kindness for compensation, while the latter cuts off all hope for the future.
40. One who says that everything occurs by necessity cannot complain about someone who says that not everything occurs by necessity, because even that claim occurs by necessity.
41. One must laugh and seek wisdom and tend to one's home life and use one's other goods, and always recount the pronouncements of true philosophy.
42. At the very same time, the greatest good is created and the greatest evil is removed.
43. It is not right to love money unjustly, and shameful to love it justly; for it is unbecoming to be overly stingy, beyond what is right.
44. When the sage contends with necessity, he is skilled at giving rather than taking — such a treasury of self-reliance has he found.
45. The study of what is natural produces not braggarts nor windbags nor those who show off the culture that most people fight about, but those who are fearless and self-reliant and who value their own good qualities rather than the good things that have come to them from external circumstances.
46. We cast off common customs just as we would do to wicked men who have been causing great harm for a long time.
47. I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well.
48. While you are on the road, try to make the later part better than the earlier part; and be equally happy when you reach the end.
49. (PD 12) It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.
50. (PD 8) No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.
51. [addressing a young man] I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclination as you will, provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbors, injure your own body, nor waste your possessions. That you be not checked by one or more of these provisos is impossible; for a man never gets any good from sexual passion, and he is fortunate if he does not receive harm.
52. Friendship dances around the world, announcing to each of us that we must awaken to happiness.
53. Envy no one. For good people do not deserve envy, and the more that wicked people succeed the more they ruin things for themselves.
54. Do not pretend to love and practice wisdom, but love and practice wisdom in reality; for we need not the appearance of health but true health.
55. Misfortune must be cured through gratitude for what has been lost and the knowledge that it is impossible to change what has happened.
56-57. The sage does not feel a greater pain when he is tortured than when his friend is tortured, and would die on his friend's behalf; for if he betrays his friend then the rest of his life would be troubled and disturbed on account of his treachery.
58. They must free themselves from the prison of public affairs and ordinary concerns.
59. The stomach is not insatiable, as most people say; instead the opinion that the stomach needs unlimited filling is false.
60. Everyone departs from life just as they were when newly born.
61. The sight of one's neighbours is most auspicious if it produces the like-mindedness of one's primary kin, or at least a serious interest in such like-mindedness.
62. If parents have cause to be angry with their children, of course it is foolish to resist, and thus not try to beg for forgiveness. But if they do not have cause and are angry without reason, it is ridiculous to make an appeal to one who is irrationally opposed to hearing such an appeal, and thus not try to convince him by other means in a spirit of good will.
63. There is elegance in simplicity, and one who is thoughtless resembles one whose feelings run to excess.
64. The esteem of others is outside our control; we must attend instead to healing ourselves.
65. It is foolish to ask of the gods that which we can supply for ourselves.
66. We sympathize with our friends not through lamentation but through thoughtful attention.
67. A free person is unable to acquire great wealth, because that is not easily achieved without enslavement to the masses or to the powers that be. Instead, he already has everything he needs, and in abundance. But if by chance he should have great wealth, he could easily share it with his fellows to win their goodwill.
68. Nothing is enough to one for whom enough is very little.
69. The ingratitude of the soul makes a creature greedy for endless variation in its way of life.
70. Do nothing in your life which would cause you fear if discovered by your neighbor.
71. Ask this question of every desire: what will happen to me if the object of desire is achieved, and what if not?
72. (PD 13) There is no advantage to obtaining protection from other men so long as we are alarmed by events above or below the earth or in general by whatever happens in the boundless universe.
73. Some bodily pains are worth enduring to ward off others like them.
74. In a scholarly dispute, he who loses gains more because he has learned something.
75. This saying is utterly ungrateful for the good things one has achieved: provide for the end of a long life.
76. I rejoice with you, for you are the kind of person I would praise if you were to grow old as you are, and who knows the difference between seeking wisdom for yourself and for the sake of Greece.
77. The greatest fruit of self-reliance is freedom.
78. The noble soul is devoted most of all to wisdom and to friendship — one a mortal good, the other immortal.
79. He who is as peace within himself also causes no trouble for others.
80. A young man's share in deliverance comes from watching over the prime of his life and warding off what will ruin everything through frenzied desires.
81. One will not banish emotional disturbance or arrive at significant joy through great wealth, fame, celebrity, or anything else which is a result of vague and indefinite causes.