Epictetus, ~125 AD
The Handbook
Epictetus was born a slave and became Rome's most respected teacher. His students compiled his rules for living into a short handbook:
Some things are in our control and others are not. In our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion — in a word, whatever is our own doing. Not in our control are body, property, reputation, office — whatever is not our own doing.
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of things. Death, for instance, is not terrible — or it would have appeared so to Socrates. The terror consists in our idea of death, that it is terrible.
Do not demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
Never say of anything, 'I have lost it'; but, 'I have returned it.' Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise returned?
How long will you delay to think yourself worthy of the best, and to follow what reason decides? You have received the principles you ought to accept, and you have accepted them. What teacher, then, do you still wait for?