Reclaiming Epicurus Quotes

“The true Epicurean cultivates the capacity to take pleasure in simple things, while those around him chase pleasure in more things.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus

“Empty is that philosopher’s argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated,’ said the philosopher of the Garden. ‘For just as there is no use for a medical art that does not cast out the sickness of the body, so there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the sickness of the soul.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“It is not society itself that the Epicurean recoils from; it is this society of unceasing struggle for more and more.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“At the point of death, Epicurus believed, we simply dissolve into the basic constituents of the universe: atoms. ‘Death is nothing to us,’ he wrote. ‘For the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feelings is nothing to us.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“It doesn’t come any better than this, the poet is saying. Luxury, though not bad in itself, will not amplify the simplest of pleasures.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“The Epicurean message, as the noted French scholar of late antique philosophy Pierre Hadot succinctly explains, is that we must ‘learn to be content with what satisfies fundamental needs, while renouncing what is superfluous.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“At the heart of Marx’s view of human nature is this psychology of projection and investment. The religious believer also projects his higher qualities onto a mythical being that, once invested with human characteristics, comes to take on a life of its own; to dominate and confront him.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“A contemporary self-styled Epicurean is little more than a gastronomic fetishist: a foodie. The sage himself, by this measure, was certainly no Epicurean. An inscription placed outside the commune conveyed something of its presiding spirit: The host and keeper of this place, where you will find the pleasure of the highest good, will offer you freely cakes of barley and fresh spring water. This garden will not tease your appetite with the dainties of art but satisfy it with the bounties of nature. Will you not be a happy guest?”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“Friendship was not only an Epicurean good in itself, it delivered real pragmatic benefits, for friends united in common purpose become allies in times of need.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

“the Epicurean ethic: it was not then, in the first few centuries after its birth, what it has become now. A contemporary self-styled Epicurean is little more than a gastronomic fetishist: a foodie. The sage himself, by this measure, was certainly no Epicurean.”
― Luke Slattery, Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special