Stoic Quotes on Control and Anxiety

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

It is not events that disturb us, but our judgments about them.

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Don't demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them to. Accept events as they actually happen.

The whole future lies in uncertainty. Live immediately.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.

First say to yourself what you would be. Then do what you have to do.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it.

The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

Confine yourself to the present.

There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best of yourself?

If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said. Answer: he was ignorant of my other faults.

Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

You always own the option of having no opinion.

Discard your misery. The hour at which you grasp this truth, you will be free.

Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms. You will be able to use them better when you are older.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been.

He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.