'Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes or figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe. So if the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to maturity instantly or in an hour, how do you expect the human mind to come to fruition, so quickly and easily? Don't expect it, even if I were personally to tell you it was possible.'

#StoicToots #Epictetus #Stoicism
#VirtueTheOnlyGood

Progress takes time. Be patient. Keep at it.

#Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.

#StoicToots #Epictetus #VirtueTheOnlyGood

Ancient philosophers saw it as their job to help people develop the character needed to thrive in life. Argumentation, right thinking, and theorizing were considered good only insofar as they helped humans develop virtue.

Modern, academic philosophy is NOT about developing character.

#Education should be approached with this goal in mind:

'How can I personally follow the gods always, and how can I adapt to God's government, and so be free?'

Freedom, you see, is having events go in accordance with our will, never contrary to it.

#StoicToots #Epictetus #Stoicism
#VirtueTheOnlyGood

One of the best reasons to read #Epictetus: the man was both hilarious & uncompromising in his demands of his stoic students! 😂😅

If the emperor adopts you, no one will be able to put up with your pretension; but knowing that you are the son of God, shouldn't your pride be that much greater?

#Epictetus #StoicToots #VirtueTheOnlyGood

Both Christianity and Stoicism have a high view of human nature.

Christians believe that all humans beings are made in the image of God. This image is both a gift and a calling.

The Stoics were pantheists. Their God is neither the God of philosophers nor the personal God of Christianity. Nevertheless, Stoics believed God (the Logos) to be rational and benevolent, all things considered.

Stoic anthropology taught that human beings alone were gifted (or endowed with) reason. We are like God in that we have intelligence that can ground the decisions we make.

Seneca claims that we can not only be godlike, we can even surpass God in some sense—meaning that we can live by reason even while shackled to all the weaknesses and problems that being a human entails. Unlike us, God can be God without the burden of having to overcome any obstacles!

Most days I fancy myself a Stoic, but I’m sure #Epictetus would mock me and say I’m actually an Epicurean 😂😭

Too Stoic for the Epicureans. Too Epicurean for the Stoics. The struggle is real 😥😵‍💫

Even more than Musonius,#Epictetus has a plain and practical agenda:

he wants his students

to make a clean break with received patterns of thinking and behaving,

to reject popular morality and put conventional notions of good and bad behind them;

in short, he aims to inspire in his readers something like a religious conversion, only, not by appeal to any articles of faith or the promise of life in the hereafter (Stoics did not believe in the afterlife), but by appeal to reason alone.

-Discourses and Selected Writings (Penguin Classics), Epictetus, p.x

#StoicToots
#VirtueTheOnlyGood
#Stoicism

#Epictetus:
Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.

#StFrancis:
Preach the Gospel at all times.
If necessary, use words.*

*Many have argued before that St. Francis did not say this, but few can deny that he lived by the saying!

"Philosophy does not claim to get a person any external posses-sion. To do so would be beyond its field. As wood is to the car-penter, bronze to the sculptor, so our own lives are the proper material in the art of living."
- #EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.15.2