Quotes About Stoicism

that my life wanted some redress and cure.

In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.

Take away your judging thought, and then there is taken away the complaint, I have been harmed. Take away the complaint, I have been harmed, and the harm is taken away.

In camp before the Quadi he dates the first book of his Meditations, and shows how he could retire within himself amid the coarse clangour of arms.

Not as though thou hadst thousands of years to live. Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good.

that to expect a bad person not to harm others is like expecting fig trees not to secrete juice, babies not to cry, horses not to neigh—the inevitable not to happen. What else could they do—with that sort of character? If you're still angry, then get to work on that. 17.

always, whether in the sharpest pains, or after the loss of a child, or in long diseases, to be still the same man;

Either thou dost Continue in this kind of life and that is it, which so long thou hast been used unto and therefore tolerable: or thou doest retire, or leave the world, and that of thine own accord, and then thou hast thy mind: or thy life is cut off; and then mayst thou rejoice that thou hast ended thy charge. One of these must needs be. Be therefore of good comfort.

present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.

33. How the mind conducts itself. It all depends on that. All the rest is within its power, or beyond its control—corpses and smoke.

The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. (Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do?) <…> not to be distracted by their darkness. To run straight for the finish line, unswerving.

The world is maintained by change- in the elements and in the things they compose. That should be enough for you; treat it as an axiom.

To live with the gods." And to do that is to show them that your soul accepts what it is given and does what the spirit requires—the spirit God gave each of us to lead and guide us, a fragment of himself. Which is our mind, our logos.

Fear of death is fear of what we may experience. Nothing at all, or something quite new. But if we experience nothing, we can experience nothing bad. And if our experience changes, then our existence will change with it—change, but not cease.

as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. A mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries. Consider what the spirit is: air, and never the same air

the soul does violence to itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or by pain.

And if all men refuse to believe that he lives a simple, modest, and contented life, he is neither angry with any of them, nor does he deviate from the way which leads to the end of life, to which a man ought to come pure, tranquil, ready to depart, and without any compulsion perfectly reconciled to his lot.

Nothing happens to anyone that he's not equipped by nature to bear.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: Is this the condition that I feared?

O imagination, go away, I intreat thee by the gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee: only go away.

What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, philosophy.

In themselves, the things of the world have no effect on the mind; they can't get through to it, they can't sway it, and they can't stir it.

no ser tramposo, tener nobleza, aguantar los trabajos, despreciar los placeres, no quejarse de tu destino, necesitar poco, la buena disposición, la liberalidad, la sencillez, no ser charlatán, la grandeza. ¿

Alexander the Macedonian and his groom by death were brought to the same state; for either they were received among the same seminal principles of the universe, or they were alike dispersed among the atoms. Consider