Wit & Attitude Quote by Epicurus

Epicurus flips the usual scoreboard. Misfortune sounds like failure; prosperity sounds like winning. He insists the wiser “loss” is still the better life, because the real measure isn’t what happens to you but how you’re equipped to metabolize it. For Epicurus, wisdom isn’t a decorative virtue; it’s a practical technology for living: clear judgment about desire, fear, and what actually satisfies. When misfortune hits, the wise have inner resources - stable pleasures, modest needs, a trained ability to distinguish pain that matters from pain that merely panics. The fool’s prosperity is brittle because it rests on unmanaged appetites and status prizes that can’t stop demanding more.

The subtext is quietly polemical against the culture of display: public luck is not proof of a good life. Epicurus wrote in a world where “prosperity” often meant political power, patronage, and competitive honor - the kind of success that invites anxiety, rivals, and dependence. His Garden pitched an alternative: friendship, simplicity, and mental tranquility (ataraxia) as the highest goods. In that frame, a wise person can be materially unlucky and still live well, because their pleasure is less hostage to fortune.

There’s also a moral jab: prosperity can make fools worse. It amplifies their errors, rewards their illusions, and turns impulse into identity. Misfortune, by contrast, can’t ruin a life that has already learned what’s worth wanting.