Epictetus — "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to …"
Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.
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More from Epictetus
"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."
"To say that 'I will do it tomorrow' is to say that 'I will not do it at all.'"
"Remember that you are an actor in a play, and the play is just as the author wishes it to be. If he wants it to be short, it is short; if long, it is long. If he wants you to play a beggar, play him c…"
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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.