All the things that fortune favours become fruitful and pleasant only if those who possess them are also in possession of themselves and not in the power of their property. It is a mistake to judge fortune responsible for anything that is good or bad for us. Fortune merely gives us the material for good and bad things—the preliminaries for what will turn out to be either good or bad within us.

Seneca (4 BC – AD 65),  Moral Letters to Lucilius (98.2)