Meditations II.15

Remember that everything is but what we think it. For obvious indeed is the saying fathered on Monimus the Cynic, obvious too the utility of what was said,²⁵ if one accept the gist of it as far as it is true.

• 25.τῦφον εἶναι τὰ πάντα, Menander, Fragment 249, Kock’s edition (Diogenes Laertius vi. 3, § 2); Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians ii. 1) attributes the saying to Monimus.

  Typhon einai ta panta, “all things are typhos”: literally “smoke” or “vapour,” and by extension delusion or empty conceit. Monimus of Syracuse was a Cynic philosopher and pupil of the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope. Menander was the leading playwright of Athenian New Comedy, here cited by fragment number in Theodor Kock’s collection of the comic fragments; Sextus Empiricus was a physician and Skeptic philosopher, probably of the 2nd or 3rd century.