Epictetus

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

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.

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.

If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it.

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

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings.

For desire, suspend it completely for now. Because if you desire something outside your control, you are bound to be disappointed; and even things we do control, which under other circumstances would be deserving of our desire, are not yet within our power to attain. Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, within discipline and detachment.

Freedom isn't secured by filling up on your heart's desire but by removing your desire.

For where you find unrest, grief, fear, frustrated desire, failed aversion, jealousy and envy, happiness has no room for admittance. And where values are false, these passions inevitably follow.

Those proficient praise no one, blame no one, and accuse no one. They say nothing concerning their self as being anybody or knowing anything.

If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both played a poor figure in that, and neglected one that is within your powers.

Protect what belongs to you at all costs; don't desire what belongs to another.

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.

If, however, he has his victim's weakness to exploit, then his efforts are worth his while.

Good and evil, in his view, come only from those things that progress from our will.

An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. To begin to be instructed, he will lay the fault on himself. When he is fully instructed, he will blame neither others nor himself.