Epictetus

“ Do you not raise the question whether you are doing here any of the things that have a bearing upon your moral purpose, so that it shall be improved? For if you are not accomplishing anything, it was no use for you to have come in the first place. Go back and tend to your affairs at home. For if your governing principle cannot be brought into conformity with nature, no doubt your paltry piece of land can be made to conform with it. ”

“ But if you understand yourself, namely, that you are putting away certain bad judgements and taking on others in their place, and that you have transferred your status from what lies outside the province of the moral purpose to what lies inside the same, and that if ever you say "Alas!" you are speaking, not for your father's sake, or your brother's sake, but "for my own sake," then why take account of illness any longer? 5Do you not know that disease and death needs must overtake us, no matter what we are doing? They overtake the farmer at his work in the fields, the sailor on the sea. ”

“ But my mother will not hold my head in her arms when I am ill.—Very well, go back to your mother; you are just the sort of person that deserves to have his head held in somebody's arms when he is ill!—But at home I used to have a nice bed to lie on.—Go back to your bed; without doubt you deserve to lie on such a fine bed even when you are well! ”