Epictetus — "Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
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More from Epictetus
"First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak."
"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."
"For desire, suspend it completely for now. Because if you desire something outside your control, you are bound to be disappointed; and even things we do control, which under other circumstances would …"
"If a man has a bad smell, he may be asked, 'To what does this belong?' To a man. 'Yes, but to a bad man.' To a bad man? 'Yes, for he is a beast.'"
"The greater part of what we say and do is unnecessary, and if a man would cut it out, he would have more leisure and less disturbance."
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.