The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.
EpicurusRead
It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.
Interpretation
Pleasant living is intertwined with wisdom and justice; both are necessary for a fulfilled life.
Epicurus emphasizes the interdependence of living a pleasant life and living wisely, well, and justly. He suggests that true happiness cannot be achieved without a moral foundation that includes wisdom and justice, while a wise and just life must also include the pursuit of pleasure in order to be fully realized.
In practice
This quote can be used during a philosophy discussion to highlight the connection between morality and happiness.
The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.
Accustom 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.
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.
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.
I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. (Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo)
Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are imposters, and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to be deceptive.
Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.
Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.
What though the sea with waves continuall Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all ; Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought : For whatsoever from one place doth fall Is with the tyde unto another brought : For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought.
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
It's not speech per se that allows democracies to function, but the ability to agree - eventually, at least some of the time - on what is true, what is important and what serves the public good. This doesn't mean everyone must agree on every fact, or that our priorities are necessarily uniform.
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