Epictetus — "If you want to be a man of leisure, do not be a man of business. For if you are …"
If you want to be a man of leisure, do not be a man of business. For if you are a man of business, you must be a man of trouble.
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More from Epictetus
"Choose to be either free or a slave, enlightened or a fool, a thoroughbred or a nag. Either resign yourself to a life of abuse till you die, or escape it immediately. For God's sake, don't put up with…"
"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."
"If your mind is not polluted by these things, you will always be healthy."
"If you have a mind to be a philosopher, prepare yourself from the first to be laughed at, to be sneered at by the multitude."
"If you see anybody wail and complain, call him a slave, though he be clad in purple."
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.