So in life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regar… - Epictetus

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

If someone handed your body over to a passerby, you would be annoyed. Aren’t you ashamed that you hand over your mind to anyone around, for it to be upset and confused if the person insults you?

When we are guests at a dinner party, we content ourselves with the food on offer; if anyone were to tell the host to put out fish or cake, he would seem rude. In real life, however, we ask the gods for what they do not give, and this though they have provided us with plenty.