"Epicurus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Universal HE; Whether some soul incompassing this ball, Unmade, unmov'd, yet making, moving all, Or various atoms' interfering dance Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance, Or this great All was from eternity— Not even the Stagirite himself could see, And Epicurus guess'd as well as he; As blindly groped they for a future state, As rashly judged of providence and fate. In this wild maze their vain endeavors end: How can the less the greater comprehend? Or ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... and perhaps even to that of this place. I would prefer going hungry in body than in soul. I am speaking against neither, for I believe in the fulness of life, in amply supplying all its wants; but the kingdom of God is more to me than this world. I would be Plato in love, Zeno in self-strength, and Epicurus in aesthetics; but if I have to sacrifice either, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... they maintained that happiness consisted in pleasure; but some of them placed this pleasure in the tranquillity and joy of the mind, arising from the practice of moral virtue, and which is thought by some to have been the true principle of Epicurus: others understood him in the gross sense, and placed all their happiness in corporeal pleasure. When Paul was at Athens, he had conferences with the Epicurean philosophers. (Acts 17:18) The word ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... does it make the governing intelligence worse, for it does not damage the intelligence either so far as the intelligence is rational[A] or so far as it is social. Indeed in the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of Epicurus. For my part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the Stoic. I can conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... philosophers; there's Epicurus And Aristippus, a material crew! Who to immoral courses would allure us By theories quite practicable too; If only from the Devil they would insure us, How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new), "Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... "Epicurus said: Either God wishes to hinder evil and cannot, or He can and does not wish to, or He cannot nor does he wish to, or He does wish to and can. If He wishes to and cannot, He is impotent; if He can and does not wish to, He is perverse; if He cannot nor does He ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation but for its grace: he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus relates that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And the true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi says, "It was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... order of Nature is admitted to be comparatively recent,—but the eternal existence of Matter and Motion; and attempts to account for the origin of the world and of the races by which it is peopled, either by ascribing it, with Epicurus, to a fortuitous concourse of atoms, or, with more modern Speculatists, to a law of progressive development. This has been called the Epicurean Hypothesis, because Epicurus, while nominally admitting the existence of God, denied the creation ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... more positive and constructive, personality was that of Epicurus. This philosopher was born at Samos, in the year 341 B.C., of Athenian parents. He came to Athens in his eighteenth year. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle at the Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one nor ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... thinking men were sad, fearful, and beset with curiosity. "If there be no gods," they were wont to ask, "have we any hope and responsibility?" They studied the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... yet not so busy as he seemed to be, wearing a coat of divers colors, and riding very badly. A franklin, or country gentleman, mixes with the company, with a white beard and red complexion; one of Epicurus's own sons, who held that ale and wheaten bread and fish and dainty flesh, partridge fat, were pure felicity; evidently a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... it was another-guise thing, and much plainer. You may, if you please, see it at Theleme, on the left hand as you go into the high gallery. Epistemon bought another, wherein were painted to the life the ideas of Plato and the atoms of Epicurus. Rhizotome purchased another, wherein Echo was drawn to the life. Pantagruel caused to be bought, by Gymnast, the life and deeds of Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four fathom long, and three fathom broad, all of Phrygian silk, embossed with gold and silver; the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... all the lids are rais'd, and none O'er them keeps watch." He thus in answer spake "They shall be closed all, what-time they here From Josaphat return'd shall come, and bring Their bodies, which above they now have left. The cemetery on this part obtain With Epicurus all his followers, Who with the body make the spirit die. Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon Both to the question ask'd, and to the wish, Which thou conceal'st in silence." I replied: "I keep not, guide belov'd! from thee my heart Secreted, but to shun ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... action. He was a humanist of the type of the fifteenth century, soldier, scholar, and man of pleasure, such as we read of in Vespasiano's famous book. Everything he did was done in the service of St. Epicurus, it was done to darsi buon tempo, as the Tuscans used to say. But this was only the superficial direction taken by his energy; if he was imperious in his pleasures, he was earnest in his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of the physical, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... electricity. A magnificent repast was spread for the Laureate and his guest, in a lofty, richly frescoed banqueting-hall,—a repast voluptuous enough to satisfy the most ardent votary that ever followed the doctrines of Epicurus. Wonderful dainties and still more wonderful wines were served in princely profusion—and while the strangely met and sympathetically united friends ate and drank, delicious music was played on stringed instruments by unseen performers. When, at intervals, these pleasing sounds ceased, Sah-luma's ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... all varieties, their refections became a study with them, and they were fain to feed by invention: novices in true epicurism! which by mediocrity, paucity, quick and healthful appetite, makes delights smartly acceptable; whereby Epicurus himself found Jupiter's brain in a piece of Cytheridian cheese, and the tongues of nightingales in a dish of onions. Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the start of nauseating luxury; unto whose clear ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification from ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Epicurus assumed the existence of matter, force and motion,—Stoff und Kraft. He held that all space was filled with molecules of matter in a state of rapid motion in every direction. These molecules were ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... and Jena. But "to please himself" he studied history and philosophy, winning great distinction in these branches of learning. He graduated in 1841, as a Doctor of Philosophy, with an essay on the philosophy of Epicurus, and it was his purpose to settle at Bonn as a professor of philosophy. The plan was abandoned, partly because he had already discovered that his bent was toward political activity, and partly because the Prussian government had made scholastic independence impossible, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of Dionysius"—consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Moreover, I am a Roman, and the Romans, unlike the Greeks, are unable to pursue profound speculations in a subtle manner. If they adopt a philosophy it is above all in order to derive some practical advantages from it. Siro, who enjoyed great renown among us, taught me the system of Epicurus and thus freed me from vain terrors and turned me aside from the cruelties to which religion persuades ignorant men. I have embraced the views of Pythagoras concerning the souls of men and animals, both of ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Epicurus seemed to think That man was made to eat and drink, A doctrine quite as orthodox, I sometimes think, as old man Soc's; For what philosophy's complete That can not take an hour to eat? I like old Socry, to be sure, But here ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... thrall'd thou art to the philosophy Of Epicurus! Naught that's human I Deem alien from myself. [To a COBBLER.] Make answer, fellow! What empty hope hath drawn thee by a thread Forth from the ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno, and having knocked with the hammer against the door, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... repose of inanimate nature. Happiness, or the hope of happiness, was the one end for which man existed, for one who suffered, and who suffered without hope, death ceased to be an evil, and became a good, and suicide became a final act of wisdom. This act Epicurus neither blamed nor praised; he was content to say as he poured a libation to Bacchus, 'As for death, there is nothing in death to move our laughter or ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... you to such a supper with such a woman? and her own description too? Is not her "champaigne and chicken" worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this stanza contains the "puree" of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:—I mean the practical philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master; for I have been too long at the university not to know that the philosopher was himself a moderate man. But, after ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... passing swiftly over; and the night cometh, wherein no man can work. The night once come, our happiness, our unhappiness,—it is all abolished; vanished, clean gone; a thing that has been: 'not of the slightest consequence' whether we were happy as eupeptic Curtis, as the fattest pig of Epicurus, or unhappy as Job with potsherds, as musical Byron with Giaours and sensibilities of the heart; as the unmusical Meat-jack with hard labour and rust! But our work,—behold that is not abolished, that has not vanished: our work, behold, it remains, or the want of it remains;—for ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... company; *Rich landowner White was his beard, as is the daisy. Of his complexion he was sanguine. Well lov'd he in the morn a sop in wine. To liven in delight was ever his won*, *wont For he was Epicurus' owen son, That held opinion, that plein* delight *full Was verily felicity perfite. An householder, and that a great, was he; Saint Julian he was in his country. His bread, his ale, was alway *after one*; *pressed on one* A better envined* man ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his degree in philosophy; and, on that occasion, discussed the important and arduous subject of the distinct natures of the soul and body, with such-accuracy, perspicuity, and subtilty, that he entirely confuted all the sophistry of Epicurus, Hobbes, and Spinosa, and equally raised the characters of his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... have been cheerful and optimistic. But those who have found a kingdom in their own minds, and who have enough strength of character "to live by reason and not by opinion," as Whichcote says (in a maxim which was anticipated by that arch-enemy of Mysticism—Epicurus), are likely to be happier than other men. And, moreover, Wordsworth teaches us that almost, if not quite, every evil may be so transmuted by the "faculty which abides within the soul," that those "interpositions which would hide and darken" may "become contingencies ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus; as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven, and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye; which was given him ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescension was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William would perpetually quote Latin and the ancient classics a propos of his gardens and his Dutch statues and plates-bandes, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. A propos of beans, he would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept probably meant that ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Imagine Epicurus in white powder, embroidered coat, and silk stockings, not content with endeavoring to overturn a religion in which he did not believe, but also attacking all existing governments, and promulgating the ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... debt, and duns, and despair; raised to an upper and, I trust, a better world, where swarms of duns can never arise, and bailiffs never come; raised, my boy, to a region of serene delight, where, like the gods of Epicurus, he might survey from his cloudless calm the darkness and the gloom of the lower world. A fortune, by Jove! Seven thousand pounds sterling a year! Hard cash! Why, the thing fairly took my breath away. I sat down to grapple with the stupendous thought. Aha! where would the duns be now? What ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... tempore,—I rejoice in the last particularly, as it is an excellent man[90]. I wish there had been more inconvenience and less gratification to my self-love in it, for then there had been more merit. We are all selfish—and I believe, ye gods of Epicurus! I believe in Rochefoucault about men, and in Lucretius (not Busby's translation) about yourselves. Your bard has made you very nonchalant and blest; but as he has excused us from damnation, I don't envy you your blessedness much—a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the same age, was well versed in the Grecian literature, or, rather, was almost a Greek himself. I speak of him, as I think; but any person, who pleases, may judge what he was by his Orations. In his youth, he studied at Athens, and returned from thence a thorough proficient in the doctrine of Epicurus; which, of all others, is the least adapted to form an orator. His cotemporary, Q. Catulus, was an accomplished Speaker, not in the ancient taste, but (unless any thing more perfect can be exhibited) in the finished style of the moderns. He had a plentiful stock of learning; an easy, winning ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... at the feet of Epicurus, we had thrust uncertainty aside, and, thanking Heaven that we had fallen so magically upon our own, confined our conversation to the events of our journey, and compared enthusiastic notes regarding the wonders, entertainments, and perils ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... of heathen wisdom is not very ancient in the world, nor at all countenanced from primitive times. Our Saviour had but a low esteem of it, as appears by His treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who followed the doctrines of Plato and Epicurus. St. Paul likewise, who was well versed in all the Grecian literature, seems very much to despise their philosophy, as we find in his writings, cautioning the Colossians to "beware lest any man spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit;" ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... St. Clare The Red Lily Mother of Pearl The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard The Garden of Epicurus Thais The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche Joan of Arc. Two volumes. $8 net per set. Postage extra. The Comedian's Tragedy The Amethyst Ring M. Bergeret in Paris The Lettered Life Pierre Noziere The White Stone Penguin Island The Opinions of Jerome ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and mistress of Epicurus, who called her his "dear little Leontium" as appears by a fragment of one of his letters in Laertius. This Leontium was a woman of talent; "she had the impudence (says Cicero) to write against Theophrastus;" ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace: he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus[646] relates, that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And the true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sin, even when, without the Holy Ghost, they do virtuous works, because they do them with a wicked heart, according to Rom. 14, 23: Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. For such persons perform their works with contempt of God, just as Epicurus does not believe that God cares for him, or that he is regarded or heard by God. This contempt vitiates works seemingly virtuous, ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... poets; others listened to the prose, spoken with much art, by men who were neither actors nor poets, but to whom youth and solitude gave an unaccustomed eloquence, which appeared to them better than everything else in the world. "Why," said La Fontaine, "does not our master Epicurus descend into the garden? Epicurus never abandoned his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love of me love Terence. It is through love of Terence that moderns are able to love Menander; and what is preserved of Terence has not apparently given us the best of the friend of Epicurus. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] the lover taken in horror, and [Greek text] the damsel shorn of her locks, have a promising sound for scenes of jealousy and a too masterful display of lordly authority, leading to regrets, of the kind known to intemperate men who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Filipino will be orthodox as he is now, formally, positively orthodox, or he will be cynically heterodox. As God made him, he might in time have arrived at the philosophy of Omar, "Drink, for ye know not why or when," or the identical philosophy of Epicurus, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." But the Church found him, and recognizing his peculiarities artfully substituted her own phrase, "Eat and drink in peace, for to-morrow you die in the full knowledge that pertains to your salvation." Let no proselyting ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... celebrated, and justly so. At her receptions one always heard the best singers and players of the season, and Epicurus' soul could rest in peace, for her chef had an international reputation. Oh, remember, you music-fed ascetic, many, aye, very many, regard the transition from Tschaikowsky to terrapin, from Beethoven to ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... ovens to which I conducted you in the second chapter preceding this one. There were found ornaments singularly irreconcilable with each other; inscriptions, thoroughly Pagan in their character, which recalled Epicurus, and a Latin cross in relief, very sharply marked upon a wall. This Christian symbol allows fancy to spread her wings, and Bulwer, the romance-writer, has largely profited ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Sir William owns, have found out the circulation of blood; but, on the other hand, they have quite lost the art of conjuring; nor can any modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents by his performance. He tells us that "Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the several empires of science than any of their successors have since been able to reach"; which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in British science ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Democritus the man. Let us return now to his theory of atoms. This theory, it must be confessed, made no very great impression upon his contemporaries. It found an expositor, a little later, in the philosopher Epicurus, and later still the poet Lucretius gave it popular expression. But it seemed scarcely more than the dream of a philosopher or the vagary of a poet until the day when modern science began to penetrate the mysteries of matter. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... experience of capitals, the sage is saddened with the knowledge that comeliness, at best, is but an exquisite hypocrisy. I have striven also, vainly, for contentment in the luxuries of voluptuous living. The talisman of Epicurus has evaded my grasp—the glittering bauble![5] The ravishing ideal JOY, has been to me not as the statue to Pygmalion: I have grovelled down in adoration at its feet, and have found it the same immobile, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... slow evolution has been considerably quickened under the influence of modern discoveries. These reach back to the most remote antiquity, and to follow their development we should have to write the history of human thought which they have always accompanied since the time of Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. The first observers who noticed that the volume of a body could be diminished by compression or cold, or augmented by heat, and who saw a soluble solid body mix completely with the water which ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... knowledge brought not in, Or in whose praise some learned have not wrote. The art of murder Machiavel hath penn'd;[114] Whoredom hath Ovid to uphold her throne, And Aretine of late in Italy, Whose Cortigiana teacheth[115] bawds their trade. Gluttony Epicurus doth defend, And books of the art of cookery confirm, Of which Platina hath not writ the least. Drunkenness of his good behaviour Hath testimonial from where he was born; That pleasant work De Arte Bibendi, A ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... antagonist pole,—not blinding itself by abstractions too elevated, submitting to what it finds, bending to the absolute facts and realities of man's nature, and affably adapting itself to human imperfections. This was the philosophy of Epicurus; and undoubtedly, as a beginning, and for the elementary purpose of conciliating the affections of the pupil, it was well devised; but here the misfortune was, that the ideal, or maximum perfectionis, attainable ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... be taken of the moral principles inculcated by the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philosophy, or of their individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... well to be overturned, it is surprising that it should be the common belief of this day, that an argument in support of atheism cannot stand a moment, and that even no man in his senses can ever hold such a doctrine. All that Epicurus and Lucretius have so greatly and convincingly said is swept away in a moment by these better reasoners, who yet scruple not to declare, with Dr. Priestley, that what they reason about is not the subject of human understanding. But let it be asked, ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... the Stoics to add that paradoxes were quite the order of the day in Greece, though they greatly outdid other schools in producing them. Socrates himself was the father of paradox. Epicurus maintained as staunchly as any Stoic that "No wise man is unhappy", and, if he be not belied, went the length of declaring that the wise man, if put into the bull of Phalaris would exclaim: "How delightful! How little I ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... in frequent bathing; for his only craving was for extreme cleanliness. But, just as the disciples of Epicurus would never have adopted his regimen, so would they equally have refused to imitate this last enjoyment; which was a little too manly for them, for his baths were mostly taken on Ocean's back; struggling against the stormy wave, and that in all seasons, up to mid-December. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... What can more fittingly furnish a support, a preliminary substitute, than antiquity? Thus philosophy, also, joins in that great stream of culture, the Renaissance and humanism, which, starting from Italy, poured forth over the whole civilized world. Plato and Neoplatonism, Epicurus and the Stoa are opposed to Scholasticism, the real Aristotle to the transformed Aristotle of the Church and the distorted Aristotle of the schools. Back to the sources, is the cry. With the revival ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... small Nero, if he wishes, behind the safety of shorthand. And how he takes advantage of his opportunities! He remains to the end something of a Puritan in his standards and his public carriage, but in his diary he reveals himself as a pig from the sty of Epicurus, naked and only half-ashamed. He never, it must be admitted, entirely shakes off his timidity. At a crisis he dare not confess in English even in a cipher, but puts the worst in bad French with a blush. In some instances the French may ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd |
