The Nexus Archive
Epicureanism · Aphorisms
Vatican Sayings
by Epicurean school
Featuring Epicurus
Eighty-one printed positions, including cross-references, lacunae, and sayings whose ancient attribution is disputed or belongs to other Epicureans.
- Intermediate
- 3 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Need, wealth, and desire guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Vatican Sayings gather short teachings associated with Epicurus’s school. The title names the manuscript collection in which these sayings were found. Some repeat the Principal Doctrines, some preserve independent lines, and some carry the voices of other Epicureans. That mixed survival is part of the work’s interest: a school of friends kept returning to ideas about need, time, gratitude, and the use of wealth.
Epicurus had taught that a good life need not depend on limitless possessions or public honor. After his death, the Garden continued to transmit short arguments that could be remembered and discussed. These sayings are especially direct about the dangers of comparing oneself with others and about the value of friendship. Their brevity invites repetition, but it also invites misreading when a maxim is removed from its context.
The voice can be unexpectedly concrete: friends may need help, a parent may be angry, and frugality itself can become an excess. One saying imagines friendship dancing around the world; another makes philosophy an activity to share with laughter and the work of a household. Toward the end, self-sufficiency becomes freedom. The collection closes by denying that great wealth or the crowd’s honor can end the soul’s disturbance.
The opening pages
Need, wealth, and desire
1 See Principal Doctrine 1 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 2 See Principal Doctrine 2 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 3 See Principal Doctrine 4 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 4 All bodily suffering is negligible: for that which causes acute pain has short duration, and that which endures long in the flesh causes but mild pain. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 5 See Principal Doctrine 5 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 6 See Principal Doctrine 35 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 7 It is hard for an evil-doer to escape detection, but to obtain security for escaping is impossible. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 8 See Principal Doctrine 15 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 9 Necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 10 [Remember that you are of mortal nature and have a limited time to live and have devoted yourself to discussions on nature for all time and eternity and have seen ‘things that are now and are to come and have been.’] Metrodorus: explicit in Bailey Greek; XLVII first portion also known as Metrodorus 11 For most men rest is stagnation and activity madness. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 12 See Principal Doctrine 17 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 13 See Principal Doctrine 27 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 14 We are born once and cannot be born twice, but for all time must be no more. But you, who are not (master) of tomorrow, postpone your happiness: life is wasted in procrastination and each one of us dies without allowing himself leisure. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 15 We value our characters as something peculiar to ourselves, whether they are good and we are esteemed by men, or not; so ought we to value the characters of others, if they are well-disposed to us. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 16 No one when he sees evil deliberately chooses it, but is enticed by it as being good in comparison with a greater evil and so pursues it. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 17 It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but an old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped he has brought into safe harbourage in his grateful recollections. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 18 Remove sight, association and contact, and the passion of love is at an end. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 19 Forgetting the good that has been he has become old this very day. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 20 See Principal Doctrine 29 in Bailey’s edition. Epicurean collection; individual authorship not independently established 21 We must not violate nature, but obey her; and we shall obey her if we fulfil the necessary desires and also the physical, if they bring no harm to us, but sternly reject the harmful. …
Chapter guides · 3
Need, wealth, and desire
Needs and Restless Wants
The collection begins by contrasting a limited life with unlimited appetite.
What is here
These positions include independent sayings and pointers back to Principal Doctrines. They move among pain, fear, natural needs, wealth, and the tendency to postpone living.
Who is speaking
The collection belongs to an Epicurean tradition; a particular saying is not automatically a sentence Epicurus personally wrote. Some positions carry explicit attribution to another member of the school.
Where it ends
The last saying makes philosophy’s pleasure immediate: understanding and enjoyment arise together. Other occupations bring their reward after the work is finished; philosophical knowledge is already part of the enjoyment.
Gratitude, friendship, and time
Friendship and Gratitude
Friendship and remembered good make happiness less dependent on possessions and praise.
What recurs
Friendship, remembered good, gratitude, and thoughtful use of the present recur. A person can be poor in expectation while possessing enough, or rich in possessions while remaining unsatisfied.
Why it matters
Philosophy has to change how a life is lived. The sayings join contentment with generosity and regard for friends, treating self-sufficiency as a way to give as well as to need less.
Where it ends
The last saying compares genuine philosophy to real health: appearing to study is no substitute for doing so. A person needs real philosophy just as the body needs real health, not the look of it.
Self-sufficiency, friendship, and freedom
The Freedom of Enough
Gratitude, friendship and limits on desire lead toward a freedom that wealth and public honor cannot supply.
Questions readers ask
- How difficult is Vatican Sayings?
- Intermediate.
- Which translation is this?
- The Cyril Bailey translation from the Ancient Greek. The text follows Epicurus: The Extant Remains (1926).
- Can I read Vatican Sayings for free?
- Vatican Sayings is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 3 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Epicurus
Epicurus founded his school, the Garden, at Athens in the late fourth century BC. His teaching joined an account of atoms and nature to a practical ethics of friendship, modest wants, and freedom from needless fear. Most of his books are lost; letters, maxims, fragments, and reports preserved by later writers carry the surviving record.
“What would remain of our fears if we understood nature and examined what we truly need?”
Epicurus gave philosophy a daily task: use inquiry into the world to make a human life less frightened and more self-sufficient. His letters and sayings survived through complicated ancient transmission and still challenge easy caricatures of pleasure.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Vatican Sayings is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.