Epictetus — "Seek not to have things happen as you wish, but wish things to happen as they do…"
Seek not to have things happen as you wish, but wish things to happen as they do, and you will have peace.
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More from Epictetus
"To say that 'I will do it tomorrow' is to say that 'I will not do it at all.'"
"Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get."
"Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well."
"It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them."
"If you are going to write, be content to be unlearned. If you are going to wrestle, be content to be beaten. For if you are not content with these things, you will not write, nor will you wrestle."
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.