Epictetus — "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to …"
Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.
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More from Epictetus
"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master."
"The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil men."
"If you wish for anything good, you must get it from yourself."
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
"Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around 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.