Epictetus — "If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both played a poo…"
If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both played a poor figure in that, and neglected one that is within your powers.
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More from Epictetus
"It is difficulties that show what men are."
"If you want to live a life free from trouble, you must train your mind to be indifferent to external things."
"Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good."
"You may fetter my leg, but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will."
"The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests."
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.