A passage from Epictetus
Epictetus, Discourses IV.12
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It is not the things that disturb us, but our opinions about them. Death, for instance, is not terrible, or else it would have appeared so to Socrates. The terror is in our judgment.
Related passages
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Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, and the harm is taken away.
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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
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Of human life the time is a point, the substance flowing, the perception dull... The only thing that escorts a man on his way is philosophy.