Quotes About Stoicism

Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence.

If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. More generally, says Seneca, if we coddle ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by pleasure, nothing will seem bearable to us, and the reason things will seem unbearable is not because they are hard but because we are soft.

To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.18 The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life.

On reading these and the other irritants Seneca lists, one is struck by how little human nature has changed in the past two millennia.

Rather, Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.

Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, "who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.

Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. By practicing Stoic techniques, we can cure the disease and thereby gain tranquility.

Seneca's comment to Lucilius that "the man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.

According to Seneca, "A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is." He therefore recommends that we "do away with complaint about past sufferings and with all language like this: 'None has ever been worse off than I. What sufferings, what evils have I endured!'" After all, what point is there in "being unhappy, just because once you were unhappy?"21

How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have? THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question.

Musonius Rufus tells us that if we live in accordance with Stoic principles, "a cheerful disposition and secure joy" will automatically follow.

In the Meditations, he offers advice on what to do at such junctures: Continue to practice Stoicism, "even when success looks hopeless.

William B. Irvine

Stoic test strategy: when faced with a setback, we should treat it as a test of our resilience and resourcefulness, devised and administered, as I have said, by imaginary Stoic gods.

Lawrence C. Becker puts it, "Stoic ethics is a species of eudaimonism. Its central, organizing concern is about what we ought to do or be to live well—to flourish."16 In the words of the historian Paul Veyne, "Stoicism is not so much an ethic as it is a paradoxical recipe for happiness.

Stoic philosophy is like a fertile field, with "Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil.

her predicament. In his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt offered this bit of Stoic-inspired advice: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Epictetus: "Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.

Whereas most people valued fame and fortune,6 a Stoic's primary goal in life was to attain and then maintain tranquility—to avoid, that is, experiencing negative emotions while continuing to enjoy positive emotions.

we must take care to be "the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.

Theodore Roosevelt offered this bit of Stoic-inspired advice: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

We should become self-aware: We should observe ourselves as we go about our daily business, and we should periodically reflect on how we responded to the day's events. How did we respond to an insult? To the loss of a possession? To a stressful situation? Did we, in our responses, put Stoic psychological strategies to work? •

If, despite not having pursued wealth, we find ourselves wealthy, we should enjoy our affluence; it was the Cynics, not the Stoics, who advocated asceticism. But although we should enjoy wealth, we should not cling to it; indeed, even as we enjoy it, we should contemplate its loss. •

Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that "all things everywhere are perishable.