Epictetus — "Don't seek to have things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do…"
Don't seek to have things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.
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More from Epictetus
"When you are going to meet with any person, and particularly one of those who are considered to be great, represent to yourself what Socrates or Zeno would have done in such a case."
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
"Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day – especially death – and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess."
"If you want to be a man of leisure, do not be a man of business. For if you are a man of business, you must be a man of trouble."
"Never say about anything, 'I have lost it,' but only 'I have given it back.' Is your child dead? It is given back. Is your wife dead? She is given back. Is your estate taken from you? Is not this also…"
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.