Quotes About Acceptance

To make mistakes is human to stumble is commonplace to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won't be able to fulfill.

the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

We need, in other words, to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.

We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment.

Negative visualization, in other words, teaches us to embrace whatever life we happen to be living and to extract every bit of delight we can from it. But it simultaneously teaches us to prepare ourselves for changes that will deprive us of the things that delight us. It teaches us, in other words, to enjoy what we have without clinging to it.

one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

He adds that the worse a man is, the less likely he is to accept constructive criticism.

we should love all of our dear ones …, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.

Around the world and throughout the millennia, those who have thought carefully about the workings of desire have recognized this—that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

When the number of options available is limited, it is foolish to fuss and fret. We should instead simply choose the best of them and get on with life. To behave otherwise is to waste precious time and energy.

There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

Marcus suggests that when we know our death is at hand, we can ease our anguish on leaving this world by taking a moment to reflect on all the annoying people we will no longer have to deal with when we are gone.

Elsewhere, Marcus suggests that when we know our death is at hand, we can ease our anguish on leaving this world by taking a moment to reflect on all the annoying people we will no longer have to deal with when we are gone.

there is nothing important, nothing serious, nor wretched either, in the whole outfit of life.

Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that "all things everywhere are perishable.

The Stoics pointed to two principal sources of human unhappiness—our insatiability and our tendency to worry about things beyond our control—and they developed techniques for removing these sources of unhappiness from our life. •

Although it might not be possible to eliminate grief from our life, it is possible, Seneca thinks, to take steps to minimize the amount of grief we experience over the course of a lifetime

I must die. If forthwith, I die; and if a little later, I will take lunch now,

A practicing Stoic will keep the trichotomy of control firmly in mind as he goes about his daily affairs. He will perform a kind of triage in which he sorts the elements of his life into three categories: those over which he has complete control, those over which he has no control at all, and those over which he has some but not complete control.

According to Epictetus, we should keep firmly in mind that we are merely actors in a play written by someone else—more precisely, the Fates. We cannot choose our role in this play, but regardless of the role we are assigned, we must play it to the best of our ability.

everything we value and the people we love will someday be lost to us. If nothing else, our own death will deprive us of them. More generally, we should keep in mind that any human activity that cannot be carried on indefinitely must have a final occurrence.

They tell us to live each day as if it were our last. They tell us to practice Stoicism in part so we will not fear death.

you will be willing to think about the past and present in order to learn things that can help you better deal with the obstacles to tranquility thrown your way in the future, you will refuse to spend time engaging in "if only" thoughts about the past and present.