Epictetus — "Do not be surprised if you are sometimes troubled by external things; for it is …"
Do not be surprised if you are sometimes troubled by external things; for it is not the things themselves that trouble you, but your judgment about them.
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More from Epictetus
"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."
"The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less."
"If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself; if it be a lie, laugh at it."
"Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well."
"You are a little soul carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say."
About Epictetus (c. 50-135 CE)
Greek Stoic philosopher and former slave whose Discourses (recorded by his student Arrian) shaped Marcus Aurelius and the modern Stoic revival. Closely associated with Seneca (earlier Roman Stoic) and Marcus Aurelius (his student-by-text on the imperial throne). For an intellectual contrast, see Epicurus, Greek philosopher of pleasure-as-tranquility — the Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years — Epicurean materialist hedonism is the precise alternative the Stoic discipline-of-acceptance was built against.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epictetus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002); Pierre Hadot (Collège de France) — Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995); Anthony R. Birley (Manchester, Roman historian) — Marcus Aurelius (1987) — the standard biography of Epictetus's most famous student. These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epictetus.