Epictetus — "Think of yourself as a slave, and you will not be disturbed by anything that hap…"
Think of yourself as a slave, and you will not be disturbed by anything that happens to you.
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More from Epictetus
"If a man has a bad smell, he is not to blame for it, but his clothes. If a man is ill, he is not to blame for it, but his body. If a man is a fool, he is not to blame for it, but his mind."
"If you want to be rich, do not heap up riches, but diminish your desires."
"If a man is unhappy, this must be due to his own fault, that he does not understand that it is in his power to be happy."
"It is better to starve to death in freedom from grief and fear, than to live in plenty with perturbation."
"A man is not hurt by what happens to him, but by his opinion of what happens to him."
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.