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“ ”Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.
About Epictetus
Epictetus (c. 55 – c. 135 AD), born a slave, was a Greek Stoic philosopher. His words were recorded by his student Arrian in the Discourses and Enchiridion written in the early 2nd-century.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Epictetus
It betrays a lack of an interior life when a person is overly focused on bodily things — whether indulging in food and drink, exercising to exhaustion, or spending excessive time on grooming. Care for your body as needed, but put your main energies and efforts into cultivating your mind.
"Be careful to leave your sons [and daughters] well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."
[in brackets: though I have only sons, I am — of course — someone's daughter]
True instruction is this: — to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole.