Q0021

Epicurus

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.
Thinker Epicurus
School Epicureanism
Source Principal Doctrines XXVII
Theme Friendship
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Principal Doctrines XXVII, within the tradition of Epicureanism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of friendship, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Epicurus's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Epicurus. (n.d.). Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0021

MLA: Epicurus. “Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0021.

Chicago: Epicurus. “Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0021.

Same thinker

More from Epicurus

  1. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  2. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.
  3. Nature's wealth has its bounds and is easy to procure; but the wealth of vain fancies recedes to an infinite distance.
  4. It is impossible to live pleasantly without living wisely, finely, and justly.
  5. The cry of the flesh is not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold.

All quotations by Epicurus

Same theme

More on friendship

  1. A friend is another self.
  2. If you wish to be loved, love.
  3. In the bitterest turns of fortune, true friends are proved.
  4. The Master said: Is it not a pleasure to learn and to practice what one has learned in due time? Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar? Is it not the mark of a gentleman to remain unresentful when others fail to appreciate one?
  5. It is perhaps also strange to make the happy person a solitary.

Browse the friendship theme