Short Works
Epictetus (50–138), 125
A freed slave's short, sharp rules for staying free inside your own mind—written for anyone whose peace depends on other people. Plain, aphoristic sentences with a streak of defiance and a steady longing for inner freedom, paced like a teacher's direct address.
Feels like longing and defiance. About freedom.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want short, blunt counsel on keeping your peace when other people have power over your circumstances. The translation can sound archaic, and the lecture-note form means some passages arrive without much context.
Why read it
It offers a compact way to test what is yours to control and what is not, especially when your calm depends on someone else's mood.
Pages from the book
A sentence of exile, met with a dinner reservation.
It is just to commend Agrippinus for this reason, that though he was a man of the highest worth, he never praised himself; but even if another person praised him, he would blush. And he was such a man (Epictetus said) that he would write in praise of anything disagreeable that befell him; if it was a fever, he would write of a fever; if he was disgraced, he would write of disgrace; if he were banished, of banishment. And on one occasion (he mentioned) when he was going to dine, a messenger brought him news that Nero commanded him to go into banishment; on which Agrippinus said, Well then we will dine at Aricia. Every grievance has a second handle. Most of us grab the wrong one.
Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act by that handle wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which cannot be borne: but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that he was nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle by which it can be borne. Kindness to a bad man, defended without defending him.
A pirate had been cast on the land and was perishing through the tempest. A man took clothing and gave it to him, and brought the pirate into his house, and supplied him with everything else that was necessary. When the man was reproached by a person for doing kindness to the bad, he replied, I have shown this regard not to the man, but to mankind. Epictetus.Epictetus was born a slave in Hierapolis and later taught at Nicopolis; his lectures were written down by the historian Arrian, not by Epictetus himself.
Books that feel like this
More by Epictetus
The Enchiridion
Epictetus, 125
A pocket-sized Stoic manual of about fifty short rules for staying steady when people, luck and your own desires push you around. Every page can be tried on a bad day.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Short Works for me?
- You may like it if you want short, blunt counsel on keeping your peace when other people have power over your circumstances. The translation can sound archaic, and the lecture-note form means some passages arrive without much context.
- What is Short Works like?
- Plain, aphoristic sentences with a streak of defiance and a steady longing for inner freedom, paced like a teacher's direct address. Feels like longing and defiance. About freedom.
- What should I read after Short Works?
- If you liked Short Works, try Essays (Ralph Waldo Emerson), Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau) and Thus Spake Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche).
A taste of the feed
Writing a page and later wondering who wrote it.
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.
Essays · Ralph Waldo Emerson
The hour when the world admits how deep it is.
O man! Take heed! What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed? “I slept my sleep—, “From deepest dream I’ve woke, and plead:— “The world is deep, “And deeper than the day could read. “Deep is its woe—, “Joy—deeper still than grief can be: “Woe saith: Hence! Go! “But joys all want eternity—, “—Want deep, profound eternity!”
Thus Spake Zarathustra · Friedrich Nietzsche
What if a life were weighed the way gold is weighed?
Pray, let us see to it, my dear Lucilius, that our lives, like jewels of great price, be noteworthy not because of their width but because of their weight. Let us measure them by their performance, not by their duration. Would you know wherein lies the difference between this hardy man who, despising Fortune, has served through every campaign of life and has attained to life’s Supreme Good, and that other person over whose head many years have passed? The former exists even after his death; the latter has died even before he was dead.
Moral Letters to Lucilius · Seneca
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