Epictetus — "If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing …"
If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.
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"The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going."
"Consider at what price you sell your integrity; but do not sell it for a small price."
"Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well."
"What, then, is the fruit of these doctrines? It is the same as that of a vine: leaves, then a blossom, then a ripe cluster. So here, first an appearance, then an impulse, then an act. And the fruit is…"
"Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day – especially death – and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess."
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.