7 Stoic Quotes on Overthinking & Worry

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

    — Epictetus, Enchiridion 5

  • We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

    — Seneca, Moral Letters 13.4

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

    — Seneca, Moral Letters 98.8

  • The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.

    — Seneca, Moral Letters 98.5

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

    — Epictetus, Enchiridion 5

  • 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.

    — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47

  • They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.

    — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 16