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No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Approximate author period: c. 60 AD · classical

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Epictetus
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 60 AD · classical
anthology circa date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Familiar Quotations, ninth edition (1905 printing) (1905 AD)

Discourses. Chap. xv.

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

The voice behind the words.

Epictetus: 1715 frontispiece; an imagined later likeness

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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