Quotes about stoicism
Epictetus -
It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body for it is better to die than to live badly.
Darshan Singh -
I hear my silence talked of in every laneThe suppression of a cry is itself a cry of pain.
Abhijit Naskar - 7 Billion Gods: Humans Above All
Being a stoic does not mean being a robot. Being a stoic means remaining calm both at the height of pleasure and the depths of misery.
Koren Zailckas - Fury: A Memoir
My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them.
Bremer Acosta - Stoic Practice
Progress daily in your own uncertainty. Live in awareness of the questions.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Seneca - The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessaril
T.H. White - Grim and Gruesome
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) tha
T.H. White - Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.
Epictetus - Happiness and Effectiveness
If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other.
Epictetus - Happiness and Effectiveness
Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a shar
Epictetus - Happiness and Effectiveness
The first and most important field of philosophy is the application of principles such as “Do not lie.” Next come the proofs, such as why we should not lie. The third field supports and articulates the proofs, by asking, for example, “How does this prove it? What exactly is a proof, what is logical inference, what is contradiction, what is truth, what is falsehood?” Thus, the third field is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The most important, though, the one
Seneca -
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.
Epictetus -
Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life.
Epictetus -
What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.
Epictetus - Happiness and Effectiveness
Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.
Seneca - Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (Illustrated. Newly revised text. Includes Image Gallery + Audio): A
Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.
Epictetus - All the Works of Epictetus
For in this Case, we are not to give Credit to the Many, who say, that none ought to be educated but the Free; but rather to the Philosophers, who say, that the Well-educated alone are free.
Marcus Aurelius -
You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.
Seneca - Letters from a Stoic
[I]ndulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather.
Seneca - Letters from a Stoic
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.
Emil M. Cioran - Oeuvres
Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la sagesse est le but principal de la vie et c'est pourquoi je reviens toujours aux stoïciens. Ils ont atteint la sagesse, on ne peut donc plus les appeler des philosophes au sens propre du terme. De mon point de vue, la sagesse est le terme naturel de la philosophie, sa fin dans les deux sens du mot. Une philosophie finit en sagesse et par là même disparaît.
Perry Anderson - Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas
[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.
Upton Sinclair - The Fasting Cure
In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving.
Salman Rushdie - Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.
Seneca - Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Ev
Justin Cronin - The City of Mirrors
It was as if I'd lost some cosmic game of musical chairs; the song had stopped, I was left standing, and there was simply nothing to be dine about it.
Raymond E. Feist -
In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation.
Seneca -
Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits
Seneca -
Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.
Thiruvalluvar - Thirukkural
Just as the earth that bears the man who tills and digs it, to bear those who speak ill of them, is a quality of the highest respect.
Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives
At the bar on the Favoritenstrasse, Julius the policeman talked to us about dignity, evolution, the great Darwin and the great Nietzsche. I translated so that my good friend Ulises could understand what he was saying, although I didn’t understand any of it. The prayer of the bones, said Julius. The yearning for health. The virtue of danger. The tenacity of the forgotten. Bravo, said my good friend Ulises. Bravo, said everyone else. The limits of memory. The wisdom of plants. The eye of parasites
Mark E. Smith - Renegade
There was a lot of pretense floating around; not just with aunties and all that but with emotions and how people saw you. They had a point. There's a lot to learn from that generation -- the stoic approach. I think it's disgusting how they've been forgotten about in this way. It's the American hippies' fault, they saw an in there, a way of making money out of bad moods. That's all it is most of the time. You can't expect to feel cock-a-hoop every minute of every day. My mam and dad's generation
Nora Roberts - Midnight Bayou
Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.
Oliver Burkeman - The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
And here lies the essential difference between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.
Oliver Burkeman - The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
And here lies the essential between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible?No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
If all emotions are common coin, then what is unique to the good man?To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God – saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it – this life lived in simplicity, humility, cheerfulness – he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of l
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
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.
Erin Hunter - Into the Wild
Warriors should suffer their pain silently.
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief
Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.
Seneca - The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
Seneca - Letters from a Stoic
[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.
Neel Burton -
Man is mostly a collection of emotions, most of which he would do better not to be feeling.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.
Bremer Acosta - Stoic Practice
When you give your items away, don’t keep the excess of your pride.
Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge
Indeed this gentleman's stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself.
Charlotte Eriksson - Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps
You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around and just leave, without looking back.
James B. Stockdale -
A properly educated leader, especially when harassed and under pressure, will know from his study of history and the classics that circumstances very much like those he is encountering have occurred from time to time on this earth since the beginning of history. He will avoid the self-indulgent error of seeing himself in a predicament so unprecedented, so unique, as to justify his making an exception to law, custom or morality in favor of himself. The making of such exceptions has been the theme
Gary Snyder -
True affluence is not needing anything.
Candice Millard - Medicine and the Murder of a President
She (the First Lady, entering the room with her gravely wounded husband) would admit fear but not despair.
Maria V. Snyder - Magic Study
Fourteen years without a mother had me believe I could be stoic when I finally met her.
Wendy Rose -
I have always swung back and forth between alienation and relatedness. As a child, I would run away from the beatings, from the obscene words, and always knew that if I could run far enough, then any leaf, any insect, any bird, any breeze could bring me to my true home. I knew I did not belong among people. Whatever they hated about me was a human thing; the nonhuman world has always loved me. I can't remember when it was otherwise. But I have been emotionally crippled by this. There is nothing
Epictetus - The Golden Sayings of Epictetus
You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he should appear at Nero's shows, taking part in the performance himself, Agrippinus replied, 'Appear by all means.' And when Florus inquired, 'But why do not you appear?' he answered, 'Because I do not even consider the question.' For the man who has once stooped to consider such questions, and to reckon up
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely *rationally* according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences or circumstances, are in our power, to be capable of always remaining consistent we must take as our object only the maxims, not the consequences and circumstances, and thus the doctrine of virtue is again introduced.”—from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German
Arthur Schopenhauer -
In conformity with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus begins with it and constantly returns to it as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should bear in mind and distinguish what depends on us and what does not, and thus should not count on the latter at all. In this way we shall certainly remain free from all pain, suffering, and anxiety. Now what depends on us is the will alone, and here there gradually takes place a transition to a doctrine of virtue, since it is noticed that, as the
Justin K. McFarlane Beau -
Someone has to be stoic, for the sake of, in spite of, and in the face of all those who are, not. Someone, has to be serious. Someone has to choose to forgo choice, so that there is an option left for others to consider. Everyone can't be, someone.
Louise Erdrich - Tales of Burning Love
There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
When you are disturbed by events and lose your serenity, quickly return to yourself and don't stay upset longer than the experience lasts; for you'll have more mastery over your inner harmony by continually returning to it.
Piper Kerman - Orange Is the New Black
How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away? From a young age I had learned to get over - to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. And when common, everyda
Seneca -
Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.
William B. Irvine - A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
...we can do some historical research to see how our ancestors lived. We will quickly discover that we are living in what to them would have been a dream world that we tend to take for granted things that our ancestors had to live without...
William B. Irvine - A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
Most of us are “living the dream” living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves.
Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi -
Submission, when it is submission to the truth — and when the truth is known to be both beautiful and merciful — has nothing in common with fatalism or stoicism as these terms are understood in the Western tradition, because its motivation is different. According to Fakhr ad-Din ar-RazT, one of the great commentators upon the Quran: The worship of the eyes isweeping, the worship of the ears is listening, the worship of the tongue is praise, the worship of the hands is giving, the worship of the
Harry Houdini -
I must fling myself down and writhe; I must strive with every piece of force I possess; I bruise and batter myself against the floor, the walls; I strain and sob and exhaust myself, and begin again, and exhaust myself again; but do I feel pain? Never. How can I feel pain? There is no place for it.
Mary Doria Russell - The Sparrow
Emilio was certainly within his rights not to reveal the sordid details of his childhood even to his friends. Or perhaps especially to his friends, whose good opinion of him, he might feel, would not survive the revelations.
Epictetus - Enchiridion
If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.
Shelby Foote - Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward." Jefferson Davis's future wife describing him at first meeting.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Even the least of our activities ought to have some end in view.
Tove Jansson - Finn Family Moomintroll
But Moominmamma was quite unperturbed. "Well, well!" she said, "it seems to me that our guests are having a very good time.""I hope so," replied Moominpappa. "Pass me a banana, please dear.
Seneca - Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium: Latin Text
What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Seneca -
All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.
Evan Mariah Pettit -
I smile to catch the piranhas from swimming out of my mouth.