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What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.

Epictetus

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Epictetus
Philosopher
Epictetus of Hierapolis
Really
Way
Frightens
Things
Dismay
Think
Disturb
Thinking
External
Life
Interpretation
Significance
Events

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Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
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If you would improve, submit to be considered wihout sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.
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The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
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Nothing truly stops you. Nothing truly holds you back. For your own will is always within your control.
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I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?
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Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.
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It is my business, to manage carefully and dexterously whatever happens
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To adorn our characters by the charm of an amiable nature shows at once a lover of beauty and a lover of man.
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When we act pugnaciously, and injuriously, and angrily, and rudely, to what level have we degenerated? To the level of the wild beasts. Well, the fact is that some of us are wild beasts of a larger size, while others are little animals, malignant and petty.
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As you think, so you become.....Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there.
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You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in your power to conquer.
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With ills unending strives the putter off.
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I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later.
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Events do not just happen, but arrive by appointment.
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We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.
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The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
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Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.
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Silence is safer than speech.
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The wise realize that some things are within their control, and most things are not. They learn early on to distinguish between what they can and can't regulate.
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It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
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