When Will Our Misfortunes End?

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Someone who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.

Epictetus (circa 50–135 CE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher, a freedman who founded a school in Nicopolis in northwestern Greece. His teachings were recorded and published by his pupil Arrian.