"Headers" in The EpicureanFriends.com " Hero Box " on Page One of the Website

Started April 14, 2023:

Destiny, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he [the wise man] laughs to scorn, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed. ... He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance. - Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus (Hicks translation)

Added May 31, 2023:

Cicero: Who can fail to see that there are in the nature of things these three states: one when we are in pleasure, another when we are in pain, the the third, the state in which I am now, and I suppose you too, when we are neither in pain nor in pleasure? ... Do you not see that between these extremes lies a great crowd of men who feel neither delight nor sorrow?" Torquatus: "Not at all, and I affirm that all who are without pain are in pleasure, and in that the fullest possible!" - Cicero;'s On Ends, Book 2 (V)16