The Enchiridion, Epictetus

• Confine aversion only to objects which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties (i.e., to injury, to malnutrition, etc.) and which you have in your control. If you are averse to things outside of your control (i.e., sickness, death, and poverty), you will be wretched.
• Suppress desire, for if you desire what is not in your control you must necessarily be disappointed; and if you desire what is in your control, by nature of it being a desire, it is not yet in your possession
• Use only the actions of pursuit and avoidance; yet use them gently and with reservation
• When you are going about any action, remind yourself what nature the action is; e.g., if you go to bathe, keep your mind in a state conformable to nature, then if any hindrance arises during bathing you can say “I not only wanted to bathe, but to keep my mind in a state conformable to nature, and I will not keep it if I am bothered at things that happen.”
  • This coincides with Buddhist philosophy, where a large emphasis is placed on being present (similar to this notion of conformance to nature). If you get annoyed when something doesn’t go your way, it is because you are attached to a particular outcome—or in the Greek case you desire what is not in your control, which is destined for disappointment
• The uninstructed will lay the fault of their bad condition upon others, the novice instructed will lay the blame on themselves, the perfectly instructed will place the place blame on nobody
• When you are prideful, and say “I have a handsome horse”, know that what you are proud of is only the good of the horse. What then, is your own?
  • The modern equivalent of this is people being prideful of their luxurious possessions, i.e., their cars, their properties, etc. If one exerts meaningful effort into constructing these things, it is laudable and is worth praise; yet if they simply route money earned from elsewhere it seems less worthy of praise…should it be?
• “Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
• Don’t think of things as lost (in the context of losing something you love, i.e, a loved one or your youth), think of them instead as returned. You don’t own what you can’t control, be grateful for it while it’s there but accept it when it goes.