Epictetus Wish Quotations

Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

So you wish to conquer in the Olympic games, my friend? And I too, by the Gods, and a fine thing it would be! But first mark the conditions and the consequences, and then set to work. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or no, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and from wine at your will; in a word, to give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician. Then in the conflict itself you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, or to be severely thrashed, and, after all these things, to be defeated.

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.

The origin of sorrow is this: to wish for something that does not come to pass.

Do not strive for things occurring to occur as you wish, but wish the things occurring as they occur, and you will flow well.

If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.

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.

Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing?... what do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that.

If you wish to live a life free from sorrow, think of what is going to happen as if it had already happened.

Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other

If you can make music with someone you don't need words. If you wish to be a writer, write.

If you wish to write, write.

Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?

Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.

It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

Learn to wish that everything should come to pass exactly as it does.

Don't demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them do. Accept events as they actually happen. That way, peace is possible.

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.

Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid anything which depends on others: if he does not observe this rule, he must be a slave.