5 Stoic Quotes on Stress Reduction

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

    — Epictetus, Enchiridion 5

  • Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.

    — Epictetus, Enchiridion 8

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

    — Seneca, Moral Letters 98.5

  • We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

    — Seneca, Moral Letters 13.4

  • 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