Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, "Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you repre… - Epictetus

"such is Death, a greater change, from what now is, not to what is not, but to what is not now. "Shall I then no longer be?" Not so; thou wilt be; but something different, of which the World now hath need. For thou too wert born not when thou chosest, but when the World had need of thee."

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.

If anything except the honourable is good, we shall be hounded by greed for life, and by greed for the things which provide life with its furnishings, – an intolerable state, subject to no limits, unstable. The only good, therefore, is that which is honourable, that which is subject to bounds.