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
"The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter."
"When you are about to say something, ask yourself, 'Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?'"
"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him."
"What, then, is the fruit of these doctrines? It is the same as that of a vine: leaves, then a blossom, then a ripe cluster. So here, first an appearance, then an impulse, then an act. And the fruit is…"
"When you have decided that a thing is good, and you cling to it, and you are not disturbed by it, then you have found your true good."
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.