September 27, 2026

What No One Can Take

Of things some are in our power, and others are not. In our power are opinion, movement towards a thing, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own acts: not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices, and, in a word, whatever are not our own acts.

Epictetus was born a slave in Hierapolis, later freed, and spent his life teaching Stoic philosophy to young Romans in Nicopolis after Domitian expelled philosophers from Rome. He had already lived through the total loss of control over his own body, so this opening line of the Enchiridion was not abstract theory but hard-won fact. He teaches that our judgments, desires, and choices belong entirely to us, while body, property, and reputation belong to fortune and to other people. The Stoics built their whole ethics on this division: since virtue lives only in the part that is truly ours, it is the one good that cannot be stolen, damaged, or lost. Health and wealth are welcome when they come, but the tradition calls them preferred indifferents, useful in daily life yet irrelevant to whether a life is actually good.

A principle of Stoicism: Virtue Is the Only Good →