Discourses, In What Manner We Ought to Bear Sickness

Epictetus — The Slave

You value a doctor the same way you value a shoemaker measuring your foot or a carpenter building your house. So treat the doctor as someone working on your body — which isn't really yours anyway, but is naturally dying. Someone with a fever has a chance to practice this. If they handle it right, they're doing what's truly theirs to do. A philosopher's job isn't to fuss over externals — not wine, not oil, not this poor body — but to manage their own mind. How should they handle externals? Just don't be careless about them. So where's the reason for fear? Where's the reason for anger or worry about things that belong to others, about things that have no real value?

Epictetus — The Slave Original

Do you not value a physician, as you do a shoemaker when he is measuring your foot, or a carpenter when he is building your house, and so treat the physician as to the body which is not yours, but by nature dead? He who has a fever has an opportunity of doing this: if he does these things, he has what belongs to him. For it is not the business of a philosopher to look after these externals, neither his wine nor his oil nor his poor body, but his own ruling power. But as to externals how must he act? so far as not to be careless about them. Where then is there reason for fear? where is there then still reason for anger, and of fear about what belongs to others, about things which are of no value?