Almost all of Epicurus’s writing is lost. These lines come from the three letters and the forty Principal Doctrines preserved by Diogenes Laertius in Book X of his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, in R. D. Hicks’s translation. Numbers are section or doctrine numbers.
“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”Letter to Menoeceus 125
Where death is, you are not; there is nothing to fear.
“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old.”Letter to Menoeceus 122
It is never too early or too late to think well about life.
“By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.”Letter to Menoeceus 131
The good life is calm, not luxury.
“… we regard independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much.”Letter to Menoeceus 130
Needing little is a kind of freedom.
“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 pleasantly.”Principal Doctrines 5
Goodness and happiness come together.
“Nature’s wealth at once has its bounds and is easy to procure; but the wealth of vain fancies recedes to an infinite distance.”Principal Doctrines 15
Real needs are few; imagined ones are endless.
“The just man enjoys the greatest peace of mind, while the unjust is full of the utmost disquietude.”Principal Doctrines 17
A clear conscience is the best sleeping pill.
“He who understands the limits of life knows how easy it is to procure enough to remove the pain of want and make the whole of life complete and perfect.”Principal Doctrines 21
Enough is closer than you think.
“Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.”Principal Doctrines 27
Friendship is the heart of a happy life.
“So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness.”Letter to Menoeceus 122
Happiness is a practice, not a lucky accident.
“The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life.”Letter to Menoeceus 126
Enjoy life without clinging to it.
“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”Vatican Sayings 68
If you never decide what is enough, nothing will be.
“Even on the rack the wise man is happy.”Diogenes Laertius, Lives X.118, reporting Epicurus’s view
For Epicurus, peace of mind could outlast even pain.
These circulate widely under the same name, but don’t hold up:
More famous misquotes: Quotes They Never Said
Epicurus’s life and ideas · Happiness · Diogenes Laertius, Book X
Diogenes Laertius, Book X (Wikisource) · Stanford Encyclopedia: Epicurus · Epicurus
