Manual for Living
Epictetus was born a slave in the first century and became one of the most influential Stoic teachers in the ancient world. His Enchiridion, or handbook, was compiled by his student Arrian as a short field guide to a well ordered life. Sharon Lebell's version strips away the archaic phrasing and delivers the ideas as clean modern sentences, arranged as brief, daily readings. The lessons are familiar to any reader of Stoicism: focus only on what is in your power, treat externals as borrowed, watch your judgments, act with integrity. What makes this edition useful is its brevity. It fits in a pocket, and every page can stand alone as a small correction to a distracted mind.
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Sharon Lebell's spare modern rendering of the Stoic teacher Epictetus's Enchiridion, offering short lessons on what to control, what to let go, and how to live well.
Manual for Living was written by Epictetus, published in 1995 by HarperOne.
Manual for Living is 128 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Manual for Living takes most readers 2 to 3 hours to finish.
Manual for Living is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.