Epictetus Quotes

While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.

We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond.

The essential idea of Stoicism in my interpretation is, you don't control the world around you, you control how you respond. At 19, that's very empowering.

Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to choose, unless that is your choice. Lameness is a hindrance to the leg, but not to your ability to choose. Say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens, then you will see such obstacles as hindrances to something else, but not to yourself.

It's not what happens to us that defines us. It's what we choose to do with what happens to us that defines us.

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .

I may have absolutely no control over what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. If we choose the right attitude, we can rise above whatever challenges we face.

What I can control is how I react. I can't control anything else.

I learned a long time ago that I can't control the challenges the creator sends my way, but I can control the way I think about them and deal with them

Things are not as we would like them to be. There is only one way to deal with it, namely to try and be all right oneself.

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

You might not be able to control your circumstances, but you can control your response to your circumstances.

I think that if you live long enough, you realize that so much of what happens in life is out of your control, but how you respond to it is in your control. That's what I try to remember.

You control what you can control.

No, we don't control who our parents are. We don't control what color we are. We don't control what home we are born into. But we control our attitude. We control our work ethic. We control our drive and our commitment.

We can only control how we react and how we respond, and that complex but so simple idea helped me survive.

Our attitude in the face of life's challenges determines our suffering or our freedom.

The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn't go our way.

Why did the achievers overcome problems while thousands are overwhelmed by theirs? They refused to hold on to the common excuses for failure. They turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones. They realized that they couldn't determine every circumstance in life but they could determine their choice of attitude towards every circumstance.

The event is not what you should be working on. You should be working on your response or reaction to an event. You either react to it - that means you become victimized, and you say this thing is happening to you - or you respond to it and say the solution must come through you - that's where you stay focused, not on the rightness, wrongness, fairness of the event, but on the appropriateness of your response.

When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.

You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

Life is a refining process. Our response to it determines whether we'll be ground down or polished up. On a piano, one person sits down and plays sonatas, while another merely bangs away at "Chopsticks." The piano is not responsible. It's how you touch the keys that makes the difference. It's how you play what life gives you that determines your joy and shine.

I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.