Discourses and Selected Writings (Classics)

by Epictetus

And yet, while there is only the one thing we can care for and devote ourselves to, we choose instead to care about and attach ourselves to a score of others: to our bodies, to our property, to our family, friends and slaves. [15] And, being attached to many things, we are weighed down and dragged along with them.

Make the best use of what is in our power, and treat the rest in accordance with its nature. And what is its nature? However God decides.

Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable.

In short, reflection will show that people are put off by nothing so much as what they think is unreasonable, and attracted to nothing more than what to them seems reasonable. [5] But standards of reasonableness and unreasonableness vary from one person to the next – just as we consider different things good or bad, harmful or beneficial. [6] Which is why education has no goal more important than bringing our preconception of what is reasonable and unreasonable in alignment with nature.

In short, we do not abandon any discipline for despair of ever being the best in it.

Make it your goal never to fail in your desires or experience things you would rather avoid; try never to err in impulse and repulsion; aim to be perfect also in the practice of attention and withholding judgement.

For what else are tragedies but the ordeals of people who have come to value externals, tricked out in tragic verse?

You should thank the gods for making you strong enough to survive what you cannot control, and only responsible for what you can. [33] The gods have released you from accountability for your parents, your siblings, your body, your possessions – for death and for life itself. [34] They made you responsible only for what is in your power – the proper use of impressions. [35] So why take on the burden of matters which you cannot answer for? You are only making unnecessary problems for yourself.

When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.

Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.