What Advice Did Epicurus Give About One's General Attitude Toward The Future?

Letter to Menoeceus: We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.

Vatican Saying 10. Remember that you are mortal and have a limited time to live and have devoted yourself to discussions on nature for all time and eternity and have seen “things that are now and are to me come and have been.”

Vatican Saying 17. We should not view the young man as happy, but rather the old man whose life has been fortunate. The young man at the height of his powers is often befuddled by chance and driven from his course; but the old man has dropped anchor in old age as in a harbor, since he secures in sure and thankful memory goods for which he was once scarcely confident of.

Vatican Saying 19. He has become an old man on the day on which he forgot his past blessings.

Vatican Saying 35. Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.

Vatican Saying 41. At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business, while never ceasing to proclaim the words of true philosophy.

Vatican Saying 47. I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well.

Vatican Saying 48. While we are on the road, we must try to make what is before us better than what is past; when we come to the road’s end, we feel a smooth contentment.

Vatican Saying 55. We should find solace for misfortune in the happy memory of what has been and in the knowledge that what has been cannot be undone.

Vatican Saying 75. The saying, “look to the end of a long life,” shows small thanks for past good fortune.