The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

Not found in the four surviving books of Discourses or the Handbook in the atlas’s Greek and George Long English texts. Searches included ‘skilful pilots’, ‘storms and tempests’, ‘greater the difficulty’, ‘surmounting’, and the Greek stems κυβερν, χειμ and δυσκολ; incidental references to pilots, storms and difficulties are not this wording. Wikiquote traces the two statements to ‘An Essay on the Vindication of Epicurus and his Doctrine’, in Epicurus’s Morals (London, 1712), p. 175, credited there to Saint-Évremond. During independent review, Google Books search-within-volume results for pilots located the pilots phrase on p. 175, and a search for 1712 using the volume identifier located that date on the title-page imprint. The reviewer could not reproduce a difficulty/glory snippet: the cited greater query returned no results. The difficulty/glory phrase and the separation of the two statements therefore remain supported here by Wikiquote, not by independently checked full-page text. During revision on 22 October 2026, the pilots, 1712 and quoted-greater endpoints all returned zero results; the earlier pilots and imprint corroboration is recorded from the review, not reproduced in revision. The full page was not read or visually checked, so the essay attribution and full separation claim retain secondary-level evidence. No translator or original French authorship has been established independently, and realAuthor records the essay’s printed credit rather than a newly proved authorship. The earliest dated combined wording and credit to Epictetus found in this run is Delaney’s article, published 17 March 2020, notwithstanding ‘/mar/18/‘ in its URL; earlier combined appearances and the point at which the credit changed remain untraced.

1. 1712Before it · credited to Charles de Saint-ÉvremondEpicurus’s Morals prints the two component statements, with intervening prose, in an essay credited to Saint-Évremond; this is an antecedent of the modern combined quotation, not a demonstrated first printing of the combination.’An Essay on the Vindication of Epicurus and his Doctrine’, credited to Saint-Évremond, in Epicurus’s Morals (London, 1712), p. 175. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 17 March 2020Earliest found · credited to EpictetusThe earliest dated combined wording found in this run appears in Brigid Delaney’s Guardian article, explicitly credited to Epictetus; this is not a claim that she coined the combination or initiated the misattribution.The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.Brigid Delaney, ‘How not to panic during the coronavirus pandemic: welcome hard times like a Stoic’, The Guardian, 17 March 2020. Checked in a full-text transcription. Source

Brigid Delaney’s Guardian article about Stoicism during the coronavirus pandemic quotes these two sentences together as Epictetus’s. Wikiquote instead identifies them as separated statements in an early-modern essay defending Epicurus, printed in the 1712 volume Epicurus’s Morals under Saint-Évremond’s name. Epictetus’s own comparison of adversity to wrestling practice, at Discourses 1.24, is a genuine but different passage.

Difficult conditions provide an occasion for demonstrating ability: a pilot establishes his skill in a storm rather than on an easy voyage.

Its aptness as encouragement during adversity does not make it an ancient Stoic quotation. A genuine passage of Epictetus on difficulties is supplied in the related entry, not substituted here as if it contained these words.

Not a verbatim quotation of Epictetus. The early-modern essay is credited to Saint-Évremond in the evidence consulted, but this run has not independently settled its original authorship or translator.

• Two passages run togetherThe greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. The Guardian presents the two sentences together as Epictetus’s; the early-modern source has intervening prose. Exact wording copied from the article, not from a quotation aggregator. Where it was seen

Courage, Wisdom

• It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are.
• The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. (misattributed) Epicurus
• Stones in my path? I keep them all. One day I will build a castle. (misattributed) Fernando Pessoa
• It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. (misattributed) Mark Twain
• Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. (not found) Martin Luther King Jr.

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epictetus#Misattributed
• books.google.com/books?id=C1tkNyJWuwEC&pg=PA175
• books.google.com/books?jscmd=SearchWithinVolume2&q=pilots&vid=C1tkNyJWuwEC
• books.google.com/books?jscmd=SearchWithinVolume2&q=1712&vid=C1tkNyJWuwEC
• theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/18/remaining-calm-in-adversity-what-stoicism-can-teach-us-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.” Attributed to Epictetus. No. Charles de Saint-Évremond (the credit attached to the early-modern essay) wrote it, not Epictetus. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/skilful-pilots-gain-their-reputation-from-storms/ (checked 22 October 2026).

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