Epictetus

“ You slave! What, do you want anything but what is best for you? Is anything else best for you than what pleases God? Why do you do all that in you lies to corrupt your judge, to mislead your counsellor? ”

“ We go to a diviner in order to find out what acts to avoid if we would escape evils to ourselves. But the things in life that are accounted our chief ills are death, danger, illness, and the like. These evils one must sometimes, in self-respect, accept, and they are in fact, not evils at all. Hence the petty things about which men consult the diviner fall into insignificance. ”

“ So also we ought to go to God as a guide, making use of Him as we make use of our eyes; we do not call upon them to show us such-and-such things by preference, but we accept the impressions of precisely such things as they reveal to us. ”