What disturbs men's minds is not events but their judgments on events. For example, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates would have thought so; but the opinion that death is dreadful, that is the dreadful thing. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own judgments. It is the action of an uninstructed person to lay the blame of his own bad condition upon others; of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.