Discourses and Selected Writings
Play sample
  • Published: 6 January 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241764060
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $37.00

Discourses and Selected Writings

Formats & editions
Paperback
29 Sep 2008
Hardback
6 Jan 2026
EBook
29 Sep 2008
Audiobook
25 Feb 2021
Pre-order from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

A beautiful edition of the great Stoic philosopher's writings, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith and new to the Penguin Pocket Hardbacks series

'I must die. But must I die bawling?'

Epictetus, a Greek Stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicopolis in the early second century CE. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of Stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love.

This is a Penguin Pocket Hardback edition, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Robert Dobbin's modern and lively translation is accompanied by an introduction and notes.
  • Published: 6 January 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241764060
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $37.00
Categories:

Other books in the series
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Peter Abelard
The Oresteia
Aeschylus
The Oresteian Trilogy
Aeschylus
The Persians and Other Plays
Aeschylus Aeschylus, Aeschylus
Prometheus Bound And Other Plays
Aeschylus Aeschylus, Aeschylus
Greek Tragedy
Aeschylus Aeschylus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles
The Complete Fables
Aesop
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)
Henri Alain-Fournier
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Death of a Hero
Richard Aldington
Beowulf
Michael Alexander
The Comedy of Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy & Paradise
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri
Inferno: The Divine Comedy I
Dante
Paradiso
Dante Dante
The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition
Shihab al-Din Al-Nuwayri
The Violent Land
Jorge Amado
Untouchable
Mulk Raj Anand
Fairy Tales
Hans Christian Andersen
The Tales of Ise
Anonymus
The Tale of the Heike
The Elder Edda
Andy Orchard
The Civil Wars
Appian
Selected Writings
Thomas Aquinas, José Martí
Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hannah Arendt
The Portable Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
The Birds and Other Plays
Aristophanes Aristophanes, Aristophanes
Frogs and Other Plays
Aristophanes Aristophanes, Aristophanes
Lysistrata and Other Plays
Aristophanes Aristophanes, Aristophanes
The Art of Rhetoric
Aristotle Aristotle, Aristotle
The Athenian Constitution
Aristotle Aristotle, Aristotle
De Anima (On the Soul)
Aristotle Aristotle, Aristotle
The Metaphysics
Aristotle Aristotle, Aristotle
The Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
Poetics
Aristotle
Classical Literary Criticism
None
Culture And Anarchy And Other Selected Prose
Matthew Arnold
Candide, or Optimism
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE
The Campaigns of Alexander
Arrian
Early Fiction in England
Laura Ashe
Alfred the Great
Asser
City Of God
Saint Augustine
Confessions
Saint Augustine
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
Emma
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Love And Freindship
Jane Austen
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
Persuasion
Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon
Jane Austen
The Life of St Teresa of Avila by Herself
St Teresa, Teresa Of Avila
The Light of Truth
Ida B. Wells, Ida Wells, Wells, Ida B.
Red Cavalry and Other Stories
Isaac Babel
Capital
Karl Marx, David Bach
The Poetics of Space
Gaston Bachelard
The Essays
Francis Bacon
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
W. N. P. Barbellion
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
Peter Pan
J. M. Barrie
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Matsuo Basho
The Tale of Tales
Giambattista Basile
The House of Ulloa
Emilia Pardo Bazán, Paul O'Prey
The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro
Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais
Perchance to Dream
Charles Beaumont
Three Gothic Novels
Mary Shelley
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Bede
Oroonoko
Aphra Behn
A Woman in Arabia
Gertrude Bell
Petersburg
Andrei Bely
The Rule of Benedict
St Benedict
The Old Wives' Tale
Arnold Bennett
Utilitarianism and Other Essays
John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham
Russian Thinkers
Isaiah Berlin
The Romance of Tristan
Beroul
Selected Writings
Hildegard of Bingen
The New Penguin Book Of English Folk Songs
Julia Bishop, Steve Roud
Lorna Doone
Blackmore, R D
The Complete Poems
William Blake
Selected Poems: Blake
William Blake
Tales from the Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio
The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
Edgar Allan Poe
The Consolation of Philosophy
Ancius Boethius
The Life of Samuel Johnson
James Boswell
London Journal 1762-1763
James Boswell
A Room With A View
E M Forster
Lady Audley's Secret
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
The Professor
Charlotte Brontë
Shirley
Charlotte Brontë
Tales of Angria
Charlotte Brontë
Villette
Charlotte Brontë
The Life of Charlotte Bronte
Elizabeth Gaskell
The Complete Poems
Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Aurora Leigh and Other Poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Browning
Selected Poems
Robert Browning
The Penguin Book of Hell
Scott G. Bruce
The Penguin Book of the Undead
Scott G. Bruce
The Thirty Nine Steps
John Buchan
A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel)
Mikhail Bulgakov
A Dog's Heart
Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Mikhail Bulgakov
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Jacob Burckhardt
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful
Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Edmund Burke
Metaphysical Poetry
Colin Burrow
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton
Erewhon
Samuel Butler
When You Are Old
W B Yeats
The Saga of the Volsungs
Jesse L. Byock
Don Juan
Byron
Selected Poems
Byron
The Road to Oxiana
Robert Byron
The Conquest of Gaul
Julius Caesar
So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
John Keats, Jane Campion
Selected Writings
Thomas Carlyle
Magna Carta
David Carpenter
Granite Island
Dorothy Carrington
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
Jabberwocky And Other Nonsense
Lewis Carroll
The Story of My Life
Helen Keller
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolome Las Casas
The Homeric Hymns
Homer
The Book of the Courtier
Baldesar Castiglione
The Conquest of New Spain
Bernal Diaz, Bernal Diaz del Castillo
The Poems
Catullus
The Blazing World and Other Writings
Margaret Cavendish
Don Quixote
Miguel Cervantes
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov
Alexander Pushkin
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida
Alexander Pushkin
Greek Fiction
Chariton, Longus
The Water-Babies
Charles Kingsley, Kingsley Charles
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904
Anton Chekhov
Plays
Anton Chekhov
The Shooting Party
Anton Chekhov
The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91
Anton Chekhov
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895
Anton Chekhov
The Complete Father Brown Stories
G. K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday
G. K. Chesterton
The Riddle of the Sands
Erskine Childers
Dangerous Liaisons
Pierre Choderlos De Laclos, Choderlos de Laclos
The Life of the Buddha
Tenzin Chogyel
Essays in Idleness
Chomei, Yoshida Kenko, Kenko, Chomei And Kenko Yoshida
The Awakening and Selected Stories
Kate Chopin
Early Socratic Dialogues
Emlyn-Jones Chris, Plato Plato, Plato
Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat
Winston S. Churchill, Winston Churchill
In Defence of the Republic
Cicero
Murder Trials
Cicero
On Government
Cicero
On Living and Dying Well
Cicero
On the Good Life
Cicero
Selected Letters
Cicero
Selected Political Speeches
Cicero
Selected Works
Cicero
Fanny Hill
John Cleland
Inspirations
Paulo Coelho
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Coleridge
Lyrical Ballads
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge
Armadale
Wilkie Collins
The Law and the Lady
Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
The Most Venerable Book (Shang Shu)
Confucius Confucius, Confucius
The Analects
Confucius Confucius, Confucius
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad
Under Western Eyes
Joseph Conrad
Victory
Joseph Conrad
The Journals of Captain Cook
Captain James Cook
Njal's Saga
Leifur Eiricksson, Robert Cook
The Book of Magic
Brian Copenhaver
Hadrian the Seventh
Frederick Baron Corvo
Selected Poems
George Crabbe
The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories
Stephen Crane
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry
Patrick Crotty
The History of Alexander
Rufus Quintus Curtius, Quintus Curtius Rufus
Pleasure
D'Annunzio Gabriele
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Darwin
The Descent of Man
Charles Darwin, Adrian Desmond, James Moore
Tales from the Thousand and One Nights
N. J. Dawood
The Koran
N. J. Dawood
Cousin Bette
Honoré De Balzac
EUGENIE GRANDET
Honoré De Balzac
History Of The Thirteen
Honoré De Balzac
Old Man Goriot
Honoré De Balzac
Selected Short Stories
Honoré De Balzac
Ursule Mirouet
Honoré De Balzac
Memoirs From Beyond The Tomb
François-René De Chateaubriand
Letters From Russia
Astolphe De Custine, Marquis De Custine
Bel-ami
Guy de Maupassant
The Essays
Michel Montaigne
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Thomas De Quincey
Philosophy in the Boudoir
Marquis De Sade
Ancien Regime and the Revolution
Alexis De Tocqueville
Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe
A Journal of the Plague Year
Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Discourse on Method and Related Writings
René Descartes
Discourse on Method and the Meditations
René Descartes
Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings
René Descartes
American Notes
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge
Charles Dickens
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings
Charles Dickens
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Hard Times
Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit
Charles Dickens
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby
Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens
Pictures from Italy
Charles Dickens
Selected Short Fiction
Charles Dickens
Sketches by Boz
Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
The Roman History
Cassius Dio
The Rig Veda
Wendy Doniger
The Complete English Poems
John Donne
Selected Poems: Donne
John Donne
Selected Prose
John Donne
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Demons
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Gambler and Other Stories
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The House of the Dead
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes from Underground and the Double
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Poor Folk and Other Stories
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Portable Frederick Douglass
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of Four
Arthur Conan Doyle
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Black Tulip
Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
The Lady of the Camellias
Alexandre Dumas fils
The Man in the Iron Mask
Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
On Suicide
EMILE DURKHEIM
Selected Writings
Meister Eckhart
Comic Sagas And Tales From Iceland
Leifur Eiricksson
Adam Bede
George Eliot
Daniel Deronda
George Eliot
Felix Holt
George Eliot
Middlemarch
George Eliot
Romola
George Eliot
Silas Marner
George Eliot
The Portable Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Emerson
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Friedrich Engels
The Communist Manifesto
Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx
Discourses and Selected Writings
Epictetus
Praise of Folly
DESIDERIUS ERASMUS
Parzival
Katherine Paterson
The Bacchae and Other Plays
Euripides Euripides, Euripides
Electra and Other Plays
Euripides Euripides, Euripides
Medea And Other Plays
Euripides Euripides, Euripides
The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine
Eusebius
Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness
Ibn Fadlan
Uncle Silas
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, J. Le Fanu
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
Shahnameh
Abolqasem Ferdowsi
The History of Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
Sentimental Education
Gustave Flaubert
Three Tales
Gustave Flaubert
Effi Briest
Theodor Fontane
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford
The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
John Ford, John Webster
The Longest Journey
E M Forster
Maurice
E M Forster
A Passage to India
E M Forster
Where Angels Fear to Tread
E M Forster
Aspects of the Novel
E M Forster
The Lais of Marie De France
Marie France
The Autobiography and Other Writings
Benjamin Franklin
Home of the Gentry
Ivan Turgenev, Richard Freeborn
Chronicles
Thomas Piketty
Poems
Li Po, Tu Fu
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell
Gothic Tales
Elizabeth Gaskell
Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell
Ruth
Elizabeth Gaskell
Sylvia's Lovers
Elizabeth Gaskell
Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell
Mademoiselle De Maupin
Theophile Gautier
The Beggar's Opera
John Gay
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Andrew George
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons
The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
The Whirlpool
George Gissing
A Short Residence in Sweden & Memoirs of the Author of 'The Rights of Woman'
Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin
Faust, Part I
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust, Part II
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Selected Poetry
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol, Nikolay Gogol
Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, & Selected Stories
Nikolai Gogol, Nikolay Gogol
Oblomov
Ivan Goncharov
The Solitudes
Luis de Gongora
The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence
Baltasar Gracián
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
Latin Literature
Michael Grant
The Twelve Caesars
Suetonius, Robert Graves
The Diary of a Nobody
George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Luo Guanzhong
Three Poets of the First World War
Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney, Wilfred Owen
Ancient Rhetoric
Thomas Habinek
She
H. Rider Haggard, Rider Haggard
King Solomon's Mines
Rider Haggard, H. Rider Haggard
Desperate Remedies
Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy
The Good Soldier Svejk
Jaroslav Hašek
The Nibelungenlied
A. T. Hatto
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon
Kenneth Haynes, Algernon Charles Swinburne
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Georg Hegel
The Complete Poetry
George Herbert
The Life of Milarepa
Tsangnyön Heruka, Tsangnyon Heruka
Works and Days
Hesiod
Hesiod and Theognis
Hesiod, Theognis
Hippocratic Writings
Hippocrates
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Tales of Hoffmann
E.T.A. Hoffmann
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg
The Dance of Death
Hans Holbein
Selected Poems and Fragments
Friedrich Holderlin, Friedrich Hölderlin
The Iliad
Homer
The Odyssey
Homer
The Complete Odes and Epodes
Horace
The Satires Of Horace And Persius
Persius
A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems
A E Housman
The Penguin Book of Witches
Katherine Howe
Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
Notre-Dame de Paris
Victor Hugo
A Treatise of Human Nature
David Hume
The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo
Edward Proctor Hunt
A Celtic Miscellany
Jackson Kenneth Hurlstone
Against Nature
Joris-Karl Huysmans, Huysmans Joris-Karl, Lorraine Daston
The Damned
Joris-Karl Huysmans
A Doll's House And Other Plays
Henrik Ibsen
Hedda Gabler and Other Plays
Henrik Ibsen
The Master Builder and Other Plays
Henrik Ibsen
Peer Gynt And Brand
Henrik Ibsen
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
Washington Irving
Islamic Mystical Poetry
Mahmood Jamal
The Ambassadors
Henry James
The American
Henry James
The Aspern Papers and Other Tales
Henry James
The Awkward Age
Henry James
The Bostonians
Henry James
Daisy Miller
Henry James
Daisy Miller and Other Tales
Henry James
The Europeans
Henry James
The Golden Bowl
Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
The Spoils of Poynton
Henry James
The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
Henry James
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
Washington Square
Henry James
What Maisie Knew
Henry James
The Wings of the Dove
Henry James
The Haunted Doll's House and Other Ghost Stories
M. R. James
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan
Gordon Jarvie
Three Men in a Boat
Jerome K Jerome, Vic Reeves
The Country of the Pointed Firs And Other Stories
Sarah Jewett
The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic
Nick Joaquin
Volpone and Other Plays
Ben Jonson
The Jewish War
Josephus
The Cynic Philosophers
Diogenes of Sinope, Julian, Lucian
The Sixteen Satires
Juvenal
The Story of Hong Gildong
Minsoo Kang
Critique Of Pure Reason
IMMANUEL KANT
Sunjata
Bamba Suso, Banna Kanute
The Complete Poems
John Keats
Selected Letters
John Keats
Selected Poems: Keats
John Keats
The Penguin Book of Haiku
Adam L. Kem
The Book of Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe
The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis
The Essential Keynes
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
The Qur'an
Tarif Khalidi
The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam
Either/Or
Søren Kierkegaard
Fear and Trembling
Søren Kierkegaard
The Sickness Unto Death
Søren Kierkegaard
The Jungle Books
Rudyard Kipling
Just So Stories
Rudyard Kipling
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Selected Poems
Rudyard Kipling
The Conquest of Bread
Peter Kropotkin
The Saga of Gosta Berling
Selma Lagerlöf
The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson
Selma Lagerlöf
Selected Prose
Charles Lamb
Tales From Shakespeare
Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb
The Centurions
Jean Lartéguy
The Praetorians
Jean Lartéguy
Maldoror and Poems
Comte Lautreamont
D. H. Lawrence and Italy
D. H. Lawrence
The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird
D. H. Lawrence
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence
The Rainbow
D.H. Lawrence
Selected Poems
D. H. Lawrence
Selected Stories
D. H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence
The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse
Edward Lear
Canti
Giacomo Leopardi
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov
The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories
Nikolai Leskov
The Monk
Matthew Lewis
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
Thomas Ligotti
Poet's Pub
Eric Linklater
The Early History of Rome
Livy
The War with Hannibal
Livy, Titus Livy
Rome and Italy
Titus Livy
The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories
Jack London
Buddhist Scriptures
Donald Lopez
On Writing History from Herodotus to Herodian
Dionysius, Plutarch, Lucian
The Nature of Things
Lucretius
The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings
Martin Luther
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights
Malcolm Lyons
The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
Le Morte D'Arthur Volume 1
Thomas Malory
Le Morte D'Arthur Volume 2
Thomas Malory
An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings
Thomas Malthus
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
John Mandeville
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party and Other Stories
Katherine Mansfield
The Betrothed
Alessandro Manzoni
The Later Roman Empire
Ammianus Marcellinus
The Complete Plays
Christopher Marlowe
The Complete Poems and Translations
Christopher Marlowe
The Aeneid
Virgil
The Eclogues
Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), Virgil
The Georgics
Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), Virgil
The Complete Poems
Andrew Marvell
Early Writings
Karl Marx
Grundrisse
Karl Marx
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
The Upanishads
Juan Mascaro
The Best of Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Melmoth the Wanderer
Charles Maturin
A Parisian Affair and Other Stories
Guy de Maupassant
The Shorter Poems
Edmund Spenser, Richard Mccabe
Amiable with Big Teeth
Claude Mckay
Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
Plays and Fragments
Menander
Three Revenge Tragedies
Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, Thomas Middleton
On Liberty & The Subjection Of Women
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
On Being Different
Merle Miller
Areopagitica And Other Writings
John Milton
The Complete Poems
John Milton
Paradise Lost
John Milton
Selected Poems: Milton
John Milton
An Apology for Raymond Sebond
Michel de Montaigne, Michel Montaigne
Utopia
Thomas More
News From Nowhere And Other Writings
William Morris
Max Havelaar
Multatuli
The Diary of Lady Murasaki
Murasaki Shikibu
The Ramayana
R K Narayan
The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories
Michael Newton
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche
Ecce Homo
Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Joyous Science
Friedrich Nietzsche
A Nietzsche Reader
Friedrich Nietzsche
On The Genealogy Of Morals
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Will to Power
Friedrich Nietzsche
Confessions of an Italian
Ippolito Nievo
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup
The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays
John M Synge, W B Yeats, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, William Butler Yeats
The History of the Kings of Britain
Geoffrey Of Monmouth
Revelations of Divine Love
Julian Of Norwich
Jason and the Argonauts
Apollonius Of Rhodes
The Voyage of Argo
Apollonius Of Rhodes, Apollonius Rhodes
The History of the Franks
Gregory Of Tours
The History and Topography of Ireland
Gerald of Wales
The Book of Tea
Kakuzo Okakura
The Erotic Poems
Ovid
Fasti
Ovid
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Rights of Man
Thomas Paine
Orkneyinga Saga
None
Complete Poems
Dorothy Parker
The Bhagavad Gita
Laurie L. Patton
Guide to Greece
Pausanias
The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection
Samuel Pepys
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Georges Perec
The Satyricon
Petronius
Gorgias
Plato Plato, Plato
The Laws
Plato Plato, Plato
Phaedrus
Plato Plato, Plato
Protagoras And Meno
Plato Plato, Plato
Republic
Plato
The Symposium
Plato Plato, Plato
Theaetetus
Plato
Timaeus and Critias
Plato Plato, Plato
The Pot of Gold and Other Plays
Plautus
The Rope and Other Plays
Plautus
The Letters of the Younger Pliny
Pliny the Younger
The Enneads
Plotinus
The Age of Alexander
Plutarch
Fall Of The Roman Republic
Plutarch
The Makers of Rome
Plutarch
On Sparta
Plutarch
The Rise And Fall of Athens
Plutarch
The Rise of Rome
Plutarch
Rome in Crisis
Plutarch
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings
Edgar Allan Poe
The Rise of the Roman Empire
Polybius
The Master of Ballantrae
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings
Alexander Pope
Manon Lescaut
Abbe Prevost
The Secret History
Procopius
Fourteen Byzantine Rulers
Michael Psellus
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin
Novels, Tales, Journeys
Alexander Pushkin
The Queen of Spades and Other Stories
Alexander Pushkin
The Works of the Gawain Poet
AD Putter, Myra Stokes
The All-Pervading Melodious Drumbeat
Senge Ra Yeshe, Ra Yeshe Senge, Yeshe, Senge, Ra
Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah
Jean Racine
The Italian
Ann Radcliffe
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe
Ten Days That Shook the World
John Reed
Clarissa, or the History of A Young Lady
Samuel Richardson
Pamela
Samuel Richardson
The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta
John Rollin Ridge
The Notebooks Of Malte Laurids Briggs
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Selected Poems And Letters
Arthur Rimbaud
Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)
Jose Rizal
The Pre-Raphaelites: From Rossetti to Ruskin
Dinah Roe
The Dhammapada
Valerie Roebuck
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
John Romer
Tomorrow Is Now
Eleanor Rossevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt
Complete Poems
Christina Rossetti
Selected Poems: Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
The Confessions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A Discourse on Inequality
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Of The Social Contract and Other Political Writings
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Selected Poems
Rumi
Spiritual Verses
The Jalaluddin Rumi
Unto This Last and Other Writings
John Ruskin
The Case Against Satan
Ray Russell
Haunted Castles
Ray Russell
Venus in Furs
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
The 120 Days of Sodom
The Marquis de Sade
Catiline's War, The Jugurthine War, Histories
Sallust
The Epic of Gilgamesh
N. K. Sandars
Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho
SAPPHO
On The Aesthetic Education Of Man
Friedrich Schiller
Essays and Aphorisms
Arthur Schopenhauer
Black No More
George S. Schuyler
Ivanhoe
Walter Scott
Rob Roy
Walter Scott
Waverley
Walter Scott
Dialogues and Letters
Seneca
Four Tragedies And Octavia
Seneca
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Phaedra and Other Plays
Seneca
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
The Comedy of Errors
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare
Four Tragedies
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part One
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part Three
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part Two
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
Othello
William Shakespeare
Pericles
William Shakespeare
Richard II
William Shakespeare
Richard III
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
William Shakespeare
Timon of Athens
William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
William Shakespeare
The Two Noble Kinsmen
William Shakespeare
The Winter's Tale
William Shakespeare
Henry V
William Shakespeare
Pygmalion
Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman
George Bernard Shaw
Saint Joan
George Bernard Shaw
Mary and Maria, Matilda
Mary Shelley
Selected Poems and Prose
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The School for Scandal and Other Plays
Richard Sheridan
The Purple Cloud
M P Shiel
The Pillow Book
Sei Shonagon
Roots of Yoga
Mark Singleton, James Mallinson, James Mallinson, Mark Singleton
Medieval Writings on Secular Women
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
The Little Demon
Fyodor Sologub, Ronald Wilks
The Talmud
Norman Solomon
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
Pu Songling
The Theban Plays
Sophocles Sophocles
The Three Theban Plays
Sophocles
Botchan
Natsume Soseki
Kokoro
Natsume Soseki
Kusamakura
Natsume Soseki
Sanshiro
Natsume Soseki
The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works
A. C. Spearing
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser
Ethics
Benedict Spinoza
The Charterhouse of Parma
Stendhal
Love
Stendhal
The Red and the Black
Stendhal
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne
A Sentimental Journey
Laurence Sterne
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula
Bram Stoker
The Penguin Book of English Song
Richard Stokes
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Stowe
Tristan with the 'Tristran' of Thomas
Gottfried Von Strassburg
The Mysteries of Paris
Eugène Sue, Eugene Sue
The Art of War
Sun-tzu
The History of Mr Polly
John Sutherland
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal and Other Writings
Jonathan Swift
Agricola and Germania
Tacitus
Annals
Tacitus
The Annals of Imperial Rome
Tacitus
Selected Poems
Rabindranath Tagore
Beauty and the Beast
MARIA TATAR
Idylls Of The King
Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Selected Poems: Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Comedies
Terence
My Inventions And Other Writings
Nikola Tesla
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
Military Dispatches
The Duke Of Wellington
Arabian Sands
Wilfred Thesiger
The Marsh Arabs
Wilfred Thesiger
The Portable Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau, Henry Thoreau
Walden and Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
History of the Peloponnesian War
THUCYDIDES
The Blacker the Berry . . .
Wallace Thurman
The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse
Anthony Thwaite, Geoffrey Bownas
Democracy in America
Alexis Tocqueville
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
Leo Tolstoy
A Confession and Other Religious Writings
Leo Tolstoy
The Cossacks and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
How Much Land Does a Man Need? & Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
Master and Man and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
Resurrection
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
What is Art?
Leo Tolstoy
Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author
Edward John Trelawny
Can You Forgive Her?
Anthony Trollope
Doctor Thorne
Anthony Trollope
Framley Parsonage
Anthony Trollope
The Last Chronicle of Barset
Anthony Trollope
Phineas Redux
Anthony Trollope
The Prime Minister
Anthony Trollope
The Small House at Allington
Anthony Trollope
The Warden
Anthony Trollope
The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope
Arthurian Romances
Chretien de Troyes
Fathers And Sons
Ivan Turgenev
Sketches from a Hunter's Album
Ivan Turgenev
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad
Mark Twain
Chronicles of the First Crusade
Christopher Tyerman
The Book of Chuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu
The Kabbalistic Tradition
Alan Unterman
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each
None
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story: 2
The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers
Hollis Robbins
Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky
Bryan Karetnyk
Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (7th Edition)
Geza Vermes
Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
Chronicles of the Crusades
Joinville and Villehardouin
On Architecture
Vitruvius
Treatise On Toleration
Voltaire
Elective Affinities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Italian Journey 1786-1788
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Maxims and Reflections
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales
Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth, von Schonwerth, Franz Xaver
Devil on the Cross
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
The Malay Archipelago
Alfred Russel Wallace
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
Penguin Book Of First World War Poetry
Matthew George Walter
The Desert Fathers
Benedicta Ward
Poems
Wang Wei
The First Men in the Moon
H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man
H. G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau
H.G. Wells
Kipps
H. G. Wells
A Modern Utopia
H. G. Wells
The Shape of Things to Come
H. G. Wells
A Short History of the World
H. G. Wells
The Sleeper Awakes
H.G. Wells
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
The Custom of the Country
Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton
Summer
Edith Wharton
The Natural History of Selborne
Gilbert White
The Complete Poems
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
The Complete Short Fiction
Oscar Wilde
De Profundis And Other Prison Writings
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Oscar Wilde
The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose
Oscar Wilde
Writings From Ancient Egypt
Toby Wilkinson
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft
Night and Day
Virginia Woolf
The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry
Jonathan Wordsworth
The Prelude
William Wordsworth
Selected Poems
William Wordsworth
Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann
Various
Conversations of Socrates
Xenophon
Hiero The Tyrant And Other Treatises
Xenophon
A History of My Times
Xenophon
The Persian Expedition
Xenophon
The Story of the Stone
Cao Xueqin
The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China
Lu Xun
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Book of Master Mo
Mo Zi
Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Delight)
Emile Zola
The Beast Within
Emile Zola
The Debacle
Emile Zola
The Drinking Den
Emile Zola
Nana
Emile Zola
Thérèse Raquin
Emile Zola
Germinal
Emile Zola

About the author

Epictetus

Epictetus (c. 55-135 AD) was a teacher and Greco-Roman philosopher. Originally a slave from Hierapolis in Anatolia (modern Turkey), he was owned for a time by a prominent freedman at the court of the emperor Nero. After gaining his freedom he moved to Nicopolis on the Adriatic coast of Greece and opened a school of philosophy there. His informal lectures (the Discourses) were transcribed and published by his student Arrian, who also composed a digest of Epictetus' teaching known as the Manual (or Enchiridion). Late in life Epictetus retired from teaching, adopted an orphan child, and lived out his remaining years in domestic obscurity. His thought owes most to Stoicism, but also reflects the influence of other philosophers, Plato and Socrates in particular.

Also by Epictetus

Major Works of the Stoics (Boxed Set): Meditations, Letters from a Stoic, Discourses and Selected Writings
Whatever is Rational is Tolerable
How To Be a Stoic
Of Human Freedom
See all