Christopher

“Epicureanism was devised specifically as a “salvation” philosophy, a positive way of escape from a most unpleasant social and political environment. So it became imperative, in a positive sense, for the Epicureans to imitate the perfect serenity and self-sufficiency of their own idealized gods, who were actually a psychological projection of the kind of beings they themselves wanted to be.”
― Epicurus, The Philosophy of Epicurus

“Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once. Don’t always be thinking about what sufferings, and how many, might possibly befall you. Ask instead, in each present circumstance: “What is there about this that is unendurable and unbearable?” You will be embarrassed to answer. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.36”
― Ward Farnsworth, The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

“There was no sense of parody or melodrama in this act, no symbolism or hidden intention; it was merely the automatic reaction of a priest who had said Mass almost daily for more than forty-six years of his life and who now faced the prospect of never again participating in the reassuring ritual of that celebration.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“The Epicurean devil, of course, was (and is) popular religion with its massive ignorance and superstition. The Epicurean savior today would be the humanitarian scientist, who would tell us that cancer is not divinely sent but naturally caused, even though he does not yet know its precise cause. With the Epicureans it was never science for the sake of science but always science for the sake of human happiness.”
― Epicurus, The Philosophy of Epicurus