Epictetus

"All philosophy in two words - sustain and abstain."

"It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded but the fear of pain or death."

"Difficulties are things that show what men are."

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."

"Nothing great is created suddenly any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom then bear fruit then ripen."

"Practice yourself for heaven's sake in little things and thence proceed to greater."

"Ask not that events should happen as you will but let your will be that events should happen as they do and you shall have peace."

"Reading should serve the goal of attaining peace; if it doesn’t make you peaceful, what good is it?"

"You may fetter my leg, but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will."

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

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

"Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it."

"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."

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

"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates."

"It is not so much what happens to you as how you think about what happens." Epictetus"

"It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows."

"Very little is needed for everything to be upset and ruined, only a slight lapse in reason."

"In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one."

"What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others. You shun slavery- beware enslaving others! If you can endure to do that, one would think you had been once upon a time a slave yourself. For vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor Freedom with slavery."