Key takeaways
- Epictetus wrote nothing. Everything quoted under his name was written down by a student, which is why the wording varies so much.
- Every quote below is checked against a public-domain translation, with the chapter it comes from.
- The single most shared line, about reacting rather than what happens, is a paraphrase and not his wording.
- The Handbook is the book everyone quotes and, according to scholars, the one that most distorts him.
- He was born into slavery and taught personal freedom. That is not a coincidence in the writing.
Epictetus produces more usable one-line rules than any other Stoic, which is exactly why his name is attached to so much he never said. The good lines are short enough to be rewritten by anyone passing them along, and after enough passes the wording has no source at all.
Below is a checked list, in the wording of public-domain translations, with chapter numbers. You can find any of them in the original in under a minute.
Who was Epictetus?
He was born in the 50s AD in Hierapolis and spent part of his life as the slave of Epaphroditus, an administrator in Nero's court. He studied under the Stoic Musonius Rufus, was freed, and later left Rome under Domitian's expulsion of philosophers. He founded a school at Nicopolis, in northwest Greece, and taught there until his death around 135.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts his central concerns as integrity, self-management and personal freedom. Those are not abstract subjects for a man who had been someone else's property.
It also explains the tone. He is not consoling you. He is a teacher who has heard the excuse before.
What is the Enchiridion, and who wrote it?
Not Epictetus. The Discourses were written down by Arrian of Nicomedia, a student, who says in the preface that he was trying to preserve the impact of the teaching rather than compose a treatise. The Enchiridion, usually translated as the Handbook or Manual, is a short abridgment of that larger work.
The Handbook is what almost every quote page draws on, because it is fifty-odd numbered paragraphs of pure instruction with no surrounding argument. The full text is freely readable in the Elizabeth Carter translation at MIT Classics.
Which Epictetus quotes are actually in the text?
From the Carter translation of the Enchiridion, with chapter numbers.
"Some things are in our control and others not." (1)
"Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things." (5)
"Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well." (8)
"Never say of anything, I have lost it; but, I have returned it." (11)
"Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party." (15)
"Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it." (17)
"This is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is another's." (17)
"When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you." (20)
"Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot." (43)
"Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them." (46)
And one from the Discourses, in the George Long translation, Book One, chapter 24:
"It is circumstances which show what men are."
What is the dichotomy of control?
It is the first sentence of the Handbook and the foundation everything else sits on. Some things are up to us, and some are not. In his list, what is ours is opinion, desire, aversion and our own actions. What is not ours is the body, property, reputation and position.
The consequence he draws is sharper than the division itself. Treat what belongs to others as your own and you will be obstructed, resentful and permanently at fault with everyone. Treat only what is yours as yours, and nobody can compel you.
That is the whole system in one paragraph, which is why the Stoic wall art that quotes it never needs further explanation.
What did he mean by "men are disturbed, not by things"?
That the event and the distress are two separate things, and only one of them is happening outside you. His example in chapter five is death: not terrible in itself, he argues, or it would have looked terrible to Socrates. The terror is in the judgment about it.
He then adds a line that does not survive the usual quoting. An untrained person blames others, someone starting out blames himself, and someone who has finished the training blames nobody at all. The third stage is the point, and it is the one most people skip.
Why does he use the theater and the dinner party?
Because both are situations where your role is set by someone else and your conduct is not. In chapter seventeen you are an actor in a play whose length and part are chosen by the author. Your business is to act the part well; choosing it is another's.
In chapter fifteen you are at a dinner. Something comes round, take a moderate share. It passes you, do not stop it. It has not reached you yet, do not reach for it. Applied to jobs, money and family, as he explicitly applies it, the image is a good deal colder than it first sounds.
Which famous Epictetus quotes are not his wording?
The most shared one. "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters" does not appear in the Carter translation in that form. It is a modern compression of chapter five, and it loses the part that makes the original useful, which is that the reaction is a judgment you can examine rather than a temperament you are stuck with.
"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants" is the same case: a real Stoic thought, circulated in wording that traces to no published translation of him.
Neither is a fabrication in the sense of inventing a sentiment he would have rejected. They are summaries wearing quotation marks, and quotation marks are a promise about wording.
Is the Handbook the best place to read him?
It is the most quotable and, by scholarly account, not the most faithful. The Stanford entry describes the Enchiridion as an abridgment offering a much attenuated account, of little independent value for understanding his thought, and at points misleading about what actually motivated him.
That is worth knowing before you print a line from it. The Handbook strips out the arguing, the interruptions and the students being told they are wrong, and what remains can read like a list of commands from someone serenely above it all. The Discourses show a man raising his voice.
Read the Handbook for the rules. Read the Discourses to find out why anyone believed them.
Why do the translations differ so much?
Because Arrian was recording speech, and speech translates worse than prose. Elizabeth Carter, working in 1758, produced careful formal English. Modern translators go after the bluntness of a lecturer who is interrupting himself.
| Passage | Older literal style | Modern style |
|---|---|---|
| Opening line | "Some things are in our control and others not" | "Some things are up to us and some are not up to us" |
| On disturbance | "Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things" | "People are not disturbed by events, but by their opinions about events" |
| On loss | "Never say of anything, I have lost it; but, I have returned it" | "Never say about anything, I have lost it, but say I have given it back" |
Which lines work on a wall?
The imperatives. "Some things are in our control and others not" is nine words and does the entire job. The dinner party and the drama need the surrounding paragraph to land, so they belong in a book rather than on a wall.
- Choose a line that gives you an instruction, not one that gives you a feeling.
- Check the wording against a named translation before printing.
- Name the translator on the piece when it carries a long passage.
- Put control and judgment pieces where decisions get made, which usually means a desk.
- One text piece per wall. Two compete and neither gets read.
The same reasoning is worked through in choosing quote wall art that means something and how Stoicism wall art keeps your principles in view.
How does he connect to the other Stoics?
Directly, in both directions. His own teacher was Musonius Rufus, which puts him one step from the Roman Stoic mainstream. And Marcus Aurelius opens Meditations by thanking the man who gave him a copy of Epictetus, which is why the two of them sound so alike on the subject of judgment.
Reading them together is more useful than reading either alone. The same check applied to Marcus Aurelius finds a shorter verified list and one very famous line that is not in the text, and the Seneca material on time takes the same idea and points it at the calendar.
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Frequently asked questions
Who was Epictetus?
A Greek Stoic teacher born in the 50s AD who spent part of his life enslaved in Nero's court, was freed, and founded a school at Nicopolis. He taught there until his death around 135 AD.
Did Epictetus write any books?
No. The Discourses were written down by his student Arrian, who says he wanted to preserve the effect of the teaching. The Enchiridion, or Handbook, is a short abridgment of that work.
What is the dichotomy of control?
The idea that opens the Handbook: some things are in our control and some are not. Opinion, desire, aversion and our own actions are ours. Body, property, reputation and position are not.
Did Epictetus say it is not what happens but how you react?
Not in that wording. It is a modern compression of chapter five, which reads that men are disturbed not by things but by the principles and notions they form concerning things.
Should I read the Handbook or the Discourses?
The Handbook for the rules, the Discourses for the reasoning. Scholars note the Handbook is an abridgment that can give a misleading impression of what actually motivated him.
