The foolβs life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.
EpicurusRead
The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that many people prepare for life endlessly without ever truly living it.
Epicurus highlights a common human tendency to procrastinate living fully, caught up in the preparations and plans instead of embracing the present moment. The fool, despite his many flaws, exemplifies this behavior by continuously getting ready for life rather than experiencing it, prompting us to reflect on our own actions and priorities regarding how we choose to engage with life.
Themes
LifeLivingPreparationActionPresent
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech encouraging others to take risks and seize the day.
More from Epicurus
All quotes βAccustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.
EpicurusRead
The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.
EpicurusRead
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.
EpicurusRead
I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. (Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo)
EpicurusRead
Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
EpicurusRead
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Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.
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I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes.
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