Quote checked against the text
“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.” — attributed to Epictetus
In substance, yes; in this wording, no. The idea is at Meditations, IV, 41; George Long’s 1862 edition is quoted below, and the sentence as it circulates is not this translator’s.
In substance, yes, and by Marcus Aurelius’s own attribution; but the words are not in Epictetus. The Epictetus files we hold do not carry the sentence: “little soul” hits Long’s 1877 selection only once, in a passage about a soul that stretches from a finger’s length to two cubits when someone praises it, and “carrying around a corpse” hits nothing in Carter or in that selection. The sentence lives in Marcus Aurelius.
Meditations IV, 41, in George Long’s 1862 translation, is one line: “Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say (i. c. 19).” Marcus names Epictetus as he quotes him, and Long’s parenthesis sends the reader to Discourses I, 19 — the chapter our Long 1877 selection prints under “How we should behave to tyrants”, where Epictetus tells the tyrant “you are master of my carcase; take it”. The sentence itself survives only in this line of Marcus.
So the attribution holds, but the locator is in Marcus, not in Epictetus: Meditations, IV, 41, in Book IV. The circulating “You are a little soul carrying around a corpse” is not Long’s wording: he writes “Thou art” and “bearing about”.
What we searched
Each fragment is searched, normalized, in every file of the editions below. The block is the search and its result, replayed at each build.
The wording was searched in Carter 1758 (Enchiridion, 52 chapters) and Long 1877 (a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion) for Epictetus, then in Long 1862 for Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 12 books).
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang en "little soul" "carrying around a corpse" "bearing about a corpse"
Elizabeth Carter, 1758 — Enchiridion · 52 chapters (Carter’s numbering) (1 file)
"little soul" 0 hits
"carrying around a corpse" 0 hits
George Long, 1877 — Discourses (selection) and Enchiridion · a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion (1 file)
"little soul" 1 hit
l. 2607 …chief philosopher, your little soul which was only…
"carrying around a corpse" 0 hits
George Long, 1862 — Meditations · 12 books, 487 chapters (1 file)
"little soul" 1 hit
l. 3333 41. Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to
"bearing about a corpse" 1 hit
l. 3333 41. Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr "petite âme" "porte un cadavre" "âme chétive" "portant un cadavre" "traîne un cadavre" "âme débile"
Jean-Marie Guyau, 1875 — Manuel · 53 chapters (modern numbering) (1 file)
"petite âme" 0 hits
"porte un cadavre" 0 hits
Victor Courdaveaux, 1862 — Entretiens · 9 chapters of the Discourses (I, 1 · I, 15 · I, 18 · I, 24 · I, 25 · II, 13 · II, 18 · III, 16 · III, 24) (9 files)
"petite âme" 0 hits
"porte un cadavre" 0 hits
Auguste Couat, 1904 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters (IV, 19–20 and VII, 47–48 merged by the translator) (12 files)
"âme chétive" 1 hit
livre-04.txt l. 172 Tu n’es qu’une âme chétive portant un cadavre, comme dit Épictète.
"portant un cadavre" 1 hit
livre-04.txt l. 172 Tu n’es qu’une âme chétive portant un cadavre, comme dit Épictète.
"traîne un cadavre" 0 hits
"âme débile" 0 hits
Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 1876 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters — second French edition, shown beside Couat (12 files)
"âme chétive" 0 hits
"portant un cadavre" 0 hits
"traîne un cadavre" 1 hit
livre-04.txt l. 169 Tu n’es qu’une âme débile qui traîne un cadavre, ainsi que le disait Épictète.
"âme débile" 1 hit
livre-04.txt l. 169 Tu n’es qu’une âme débile qui traîne un cadavre, ainsi que le disait Épictète.This sentence appears 2 times in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say (i. c. 19).
How to cite
The idea, not this wording, is at:
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 41 (trans. George Long, 1862), quoting Epictetus
Other sentences checked
All sentences attributed to EpictetusAll quote checks
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference. The 39 passages of Epictetus are in Stoic+, each with its locator.