Epictetus — "When you have decided that a thing is good, and you cling to it, and you are not…"
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.
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More from Epictetus
"Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power."
"Freedom is not the right to do what you want, but the power to do what is right."
"If a man is unhappy, this must be due to himself, that is, to his own false choices."
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
"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."
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.