Epictetus

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Only the educated are free.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. (1).

No man is free who is not master of himself.

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

It is difficulties that show what men are.

For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. For example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have appeared so to Socrates; but the judgment that death is terrible — that is the terrible thing.

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.

When you have decided that a thing ought to be done and are doing it, never avoid being seen doing it, though many shall form an unfavorable opinion about it. For if it is not right, avoid doing the thing; but if it is right, why are you afraid of those who shall find fault wrongly?