The foolβs life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.
EpicurusRead
As if they were our own handiwork we place a high value on our characters.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We tend to cherish and take pride in our character, viewing it as a product of our own efforts.
This quote by Epicurus emphasizes the importance of character in our lives. It suggests that we hold our character in high regard, treating it as if it were a creation of our own deliberate actions and choices. By valuing our character, we acknowledge the role that our decisions play in shaping who we are, reflecting a deeper philosophical understanding of personal responsibility and integrity.
Themes
CharacterValueHandiworkPhilosophyIntegrity
In practice
Example use cases
During a leadership seminar, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of integrity in leadership.
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
Similar quotes
To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.
Bertrand RussellRead
The Lord has said, βI have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.β (Isaiah 48:10, 1 Nephi 20:10). He knows, being omniscient, how we will cope with affliction beforehand. But we do not know this. We need, therefore, the refining that God gives to us, though we do not seek or crave such tribulation.
Neal A. MaxwellRead
As a nuclear power - as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon - the United States has a moral responsibility to act.
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I walk up and down the rows. The heads look like rubber halloween masks. They also look like human heads, but my brain has no precedent for human heads on tables or in roasting pans or anywhere other than on top of a human bodies, and so I think it has chosen to interpret the sight in a more comforting manner. - Here we are at the rubber mask factory. Look at the nice men and woman working on the masks.
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Death smells like homemade apple sauce as it cooks on the stove. It is not the strangling sense of illness. It is not fear. It is freedom.
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Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women. It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.
Oscar WildeRead