Flourishing
For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.
Robert Drew Hicks translation.
Return to this reading →Epicurus
341–270 BCE
Epicureanism
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who established the school known as the Garden in Athens. He taught that a good life rests on pleasure understood through freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance, with prudent choices and friendship central to that life.
Biography sources
In the Inner Garden
What is here
Don't ruin the things you have by wanting what you don't have, but realize that they too are things you once did wish for.
Peter Saint-Andre translation.
The Vatican Sayings preserve a collection of Epicurean maxims. This reading invites appreciation of present goods, not acceptance of harmful circumstances or abandonment of worthwhile aims.
Return to this reading →On friendship · The Square
A place in our lives
Of all the things that wisdom provides for the complete happiness of one’s entire life, by far the greatest is friendship.
Peter Saint-Andre translation.
Return to this reading →Not alone
We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.
Wording as reproduced by Epicurus.info; the translator of this wording has not been confirmed. The Vatican Sayings are a collection of Epicurean maxims.
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