Epictetus — "Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about r…"
Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.
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More from Epictetus
"Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but choose to wish that everything that happens happen as it does, and your life will proceed smoothly."
"The greatest good is that which is chosen in spite of fear."
"Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice – now.…"
"Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself."
"If a man has a bad smell, he knows it not, but his neighbor knows it. So too with our faults."
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.