Quote checked against the text
“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” — attributed to Epictetus
Yes. The sentence is in the text, at Enchiridion, V; Elizabeth Carter’s 1758 edition is quoted below.
Yes, word for word. This is the opening sentence of Enchiridion V in Elizabeth Carter’s 1758 translation: “Men are disturbed, not by Things, but by the Principles and Notions, which they form concerning Things.” Both fragments searched, “disturbed, not by things” and “principles and notions”, hit the same line of Carter’s text.
The chapter goes on with the example of death, which is not terrible in itself, “else it would have appeared so to Socrates”; the terror lies in our notion of it. It ends with the three stages of instruction: the uninstructed lay the fault of their bad condition upon others, the beginner on himself, the perfectly instructed on neither. George Long’s 1877 rendering of the same chapter says “the opinions about the things” where Carter says principles and notions; the sentence that circulates follows Carter.
So this one is attested: Enchiridion, V, in Carter’s exact words. It is also the chapter behind several rewrites that circulate under Epictetus’s name, such as “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”.
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).
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang en --author epictete "disturbed, not by things" "principles and notions"
Elizabeth Carter, 1758 — Enchiridion · 52 chapters (Carter’s numbering) (1 file)
"disturbed, not by things" 1 hit
l. 46 Men are disturbed, not by Things, but by…
"principles and notions" 1 hit
l. 46 …but by the Principles and Notions, which they…
George Long, 1877 — Discourses (selection) and Enchiridion · a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion (1 file)
"disturbed, not by things" 0 hits
"principles and notions" 0 hits
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr --author epictete "les jugements qu’ils portent" "trouble les hommes" "n’accusons jamais autrui"
Jean-Marie Guyau, 1875 — Manuel · 53 chapters (modern numbering) (1 file)
"les jugements qu’ils portent" 0 hits
"trouble les hommes" 1 hit
l. 124 Ce qui trouble les hommes, ce ne…
"n’accusons jamais autrui" 1 hit
l. 130 …troublés, ou affligés, n’accusons jamais autrui, mais nous-mêmes,…
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)
"les jugements qu’ils portent" 0 hits
"trouble les hommes" 0 hits
"n’accusons jamais autrui" 0 hitsThis sentence appears 2 times in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
Men are disturbed, not by Things, but by the Principles and Notions, which they form concerning Things.
How to cite
The passage, in the edition quoted above:
Epictetus, Enchiridion, V (trans. Elizabeth Carter, 1758)
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.