Epictetus

With ev­ery ac­ci­dent, ask your­self what abil­i­ties you have for mak­ing a proper use of it. If you see an at­trac­tive per­son, you will find that self-re­straint is the abil­ity you have against your de­sire. If you are in pain, you will find for­ti­tude. If you hear un­pleas­ant lan­guage, you will find pa­tience.

Don’t de­mand that things hap­pen as you wish, but wish that they hap­pen as they do hap­pen, and you will go on well.

It’s not the ac­ci­dent that dis­tresses this per­son, be­cause it doesn’t dis­tress an­other per­son; it is the judg­ment which he makes about it

With re­gard to what­ever ob­jects give you de­light, are use­ful, or are deeply loved, re­mem­ber to tell your­self of what gen­eral na­ture they are, be­gin­ning from the most in­signif­i­cant things.

Don’t de­mand that things hap­pen as you wish, but wish that they hap­pen as they do hap­pen, and you will go on well.

Who told you, then, that these are among the things in our own con­trol, and not the af­fair of oth­ers? And who can give to an­other the things which he has not him­self?

If any­one tells you that such a per­son speaks ill of you, don’t make ex­cuses about what is said of you, but an­swer: “He does not know my other faults, else he would not have men­tioned only these.”

It is a mark of want of ge­nius to spend much time in things re­lat­ing to the body, as to be long in our ex­er­cises, in eat­ing and drink­ing, and in the dis­charge of other an­i­mal func­tions.

Are they not the words of all kings that are? For what else are tragedies but a portrayal in such metrical form of the sufferings of men who have set their admiration on outward things? If delusion after all were the only means for a man to learn this lesson30—the lesson that not one of the things beyond the compass of our will concerns us, then I for my part would choose a delusion such as this, if it should procure me a life of undisturbed tranquillity

Do you see where your eyes are looking? You are looking at the earth, at what is lowest and basest,42 at these miserable laws of the dead, and you regard not the laws of the gods.