Stoicism Quotes

For the Stoics, however, the near impossibility of becoming a sage is not a problem. They talk about sages primarily so they will have a model to guide them in their practice of Stoicism. The sage is a target for them to aim at, even though they will probably fail to hit it. The sage, in other words, is to Stoicism as Buddha is to Buddhism. Most Buddhists can never hope to become as enlightened as Buddha, but nevertheless, reflecting on Buddha's perfection can help them gain a degree of enlightenment. ~ William B. Irvine

We need not reply or even listen to people who are talking about - not to - us. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Even the worst that has ever happened to you could have been worse. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

An action is at least a billion times less difficult to choose than a reaction. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

He liked the English and their peculiarities. He liked their stoicism under pressure; on the wall in his factory he kept a copy of a war poster emblazoned with the Crown of King George and underneath the words Keep Calm and Carry On. ~ Natasha Solomons

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. ~ Mary Doria Russell

To me, the persistence of my grandfather's rituals meant that he was unchanged, running on discipline and continuance and stoicism. I didn't notice, and didn't realize, that the rituals themselves were changing, that there was a difference between the rituals of comfort and the preventive rituals that come at the end of life. ~ Tea Obreht

All Hellenistic schools seem to define [wisdom] in approximately the same terms: first and foremost, as a state of perfect peace of mind. From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest; and for the Skeptics, by false opinions. Whether or not they laid claim to the Socratic heritage, all Hellenistic philosophers agreed with Socrates that human beings are plunged in misery, anguish, and evil because they exist in ignorance. Evil is to be found not within things, but in the value judgments with people bring to bear upon things. People can therefore be cured of their ills only if they are persuaded to change their value judgments, and in this sense all these philosophies wanted to be therapeutic. ~ Pierre Hadot

The bigger the family, the bigger the number of corpses it owes life. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Even most of those whose wealth was not inherited or won often lose sleep over losing their wealth. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and how many problems it gives us. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Pretty much all wealthy people who were willing to lose and have lost their health while chasing wealth are now willing to lose their wealth while chasing health. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It is childish to be surprised by something that you knew exists or is possible. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The peace of God is not the peace of stoicism or passivity. It is the most intense activity. ~ Oswald Chambers

When pain comes, it must not derail you from your set virtues. If it does, you have failed to practice your virtues by going with the hype of pain. ~ Tiisetso Maloma

The Stoics taught a life of restraint and control, the personal cultivation of learning, beauty, and reason. The Stoics asked the Romans to realize that much that is encountered in life is beyond the individual's control. Make the best of what can be humanly cultivated. It is a kind of Platonism shrunk to a pursuit of private feelings and thoughts: Do the best with what you can control and refine, and let the rest go.
"The world is rational, but it is only amenable to active intervention within the limits of the individual's capacity. Do not try to be an overachiever. Do not dream of social transformation. Private cultivation rather than social action makes for the good life. Although the slave Epictetus was one of the principal Stoic writers, the emperor Marcus Aurelius's upper-class background is more typical of its devotees.
"Stoicism is a narrow ethic, one suitable to the emotional and intellectual needs of aristocrat and slave alike, but less useful for the ambitious middle class. ~ Norman F. Cantor

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. The agility of the earth. The merit of the soldier. The cunning of the giant. The hole of the will. Magnificent, said my good friend Ulises in German. Extraordinary. ~ Roberto Bolano

Indeed, the application of the adjective "stoic" to a person who shows strength and courage in misfortune probably owes more to the aristocratic Roman value system than it does to Greek philosophers. Stoicism ~ Marcus Aurelius

A tenet of stoicism advises to live according to your nature. If you try to be something you aren't, you'll self-destruct. ~ Blake Crouch

The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged. ~ Cleanthes Of Assos

One of the first lessons from Stoicism, then, is to focus our attention and efforts where we have the most power and then let the universe run as it will. This will save us both a lot of energy and a lot of worry. Another ~ Massimo Pigliucci

When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. ~ Marcus Aurelius

If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you. ~ Seneca.

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself. ~ Seneca.

Happiness is an inevitable result of embracing, and unhappiness that of rejecting, what is. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We might never rid ourselves of a lingering anxiety regarding our death; this is a kind of tax we pay in return for self-awareness. ~ Derren Brown

In his numerous historical and Scriptural works Bauer rejects all supernatural religion, and represents Christianity as a natural product of the mingling of the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies ... ~ Joseph McCabe

When a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow, it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity. But if the dog does not follow, it will be compelled in any case. So it is with men too: even if they don't want to, they will be compelled to follow what is destined. ~ Zeno Of Citium

He believed hunger to be the best appetizer, and because he waited until he was hungry or thirsty before he ate or drank, "he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of running water more than others did their Thasian wine."6 When asked about his lack of an abode, Diogenes would reply that he had access to the greatest houses in every city - to their temples and gymnasia, that is. And when asked what he had learned from philosophy, Diogenes replied, "To be prepared for every fortune."7 This reply, as we shall see, anticipates one important theme of Stoicism. The ~ William B. Irvine

Oh, dear me!" he lamented. "The raft has floated off and I suppose it's gone down that awful hole by now."
"Well, never mind. We're not on it," said Snufkin gaily. "What's a kettle here or there when you're out looking for a comet! ~ Tove Jansson

All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The wife of a junior officer cooped up in a horrible canvas partition in steerage for five months wrote:
"I had enjoyed much peace there in the absence of every comfort, even of such as are now enjoyed in jail. I used to say that there were four privations in my situation - fire, water, earth and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set the foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe. Yet, with all these miserable circumstances, we spent many a happy hour by candlelight in that wretched cabin whilst I sewed and he read the Bible to me. ~ Stephen Taylor

It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great. ~ Seneca.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, it is not that our desires are too strong (as Stoicism would have it), but that they are too weak. 3 The irony of our lives is that we demand the ephemeral, momentary glories of this fading age, too easily amused and seduced by the trivial, when ultimate joy is held out to us. ~ Michael S. Horton

There was no sign of Plato, and I was told later that he had gone to live in his Republic, where he was cheerfully submitting to his own Laws. [ ... ] None of the Stoics were present. Rumour had it that they were still clambering up the steep hill of Virtue [ ... ]. As for the Sceptics, it appeared that they were extremely anxious to get there, but still could not quite make up their minds whether or not the island really existed. ~ Lucian Of Samosata

Once you start learning from your problems, you stop wishing for a life without problems. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Warriors should suffer their pain silently. ~ Erin Hunter

The weaker the desire to change, the further away from now is the moment from which we plan on changing. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Those who dare to speak to me directly call me Sin." She nodded. "Cyn? Short for Cynric?"
"Nay," he said, recovering his stoicism as he remembered who and what he was. "S-I-N. As in conceived in, born in, and am currently living happily in."
He felt her hand tremble for the first time. "You like to frighten people, don't you?" she asked.
"Aye."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
-Sin & Callie ~ Kinley MacGregor

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. ~ Thiruvalluvar

40. The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say, perhaps, 'But all that is something they have put in my own power.' Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. Besides, who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? Begin praying in this way, and you will see. Where another man prays 'Grant that I may possess this woman,' let your own prayer be, 'Grant that I may not lust to possess her.' Where he prays, 'Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,' you pray, 'Take from me my desire to be rid of him.' Where he begs, 'Spare me the loss of my precious child,' beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him. In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction, and see what comes. ~ Marcus Aurelius

When our stoicism interferes with our humanity, we risk developing a wooden emotional life and an equally wooden personality. In contrast, the realization that our ability to work through pain makes us stronger than all of our efforts to exorcise it may in the long run alleviate its burden. It may enable us to take up our destiny as creatures whose very vulnerability renders us capable of inspired and truly awe-inspiring love. ~ Mari Ruti

Believing then … that human life is actually worth living, one can combat one's natural pessimism by stoicism and the refusal of illusion, while embellishing the scene with any one of the following. There are the beauties of science and the extraordinary marvels of nature. There is the consolation and irony of philosophy. There are the infinite splendors of literature and poetry, not excluding the liturgical and devotional aspects of these, such as those found in John Donne or George Herbert. There is the grand resource of art and music and architecture, again not excluding those elements that aspire to the sublime. In all of these pursuits, any one of them enough to absorb a lifetime, there may be found a sense of awe and magnificence that does not depend at all on any invocation of the supernatural. Indeed, nobody armed by art and culture and literature and philosophy is likely to be anything but bored and sickened by ghost stories, UFO tales, spiritualist experiences, or babblings from the beyond. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Telling some people not to waste time is a waste of time. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution, and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt, whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness. He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day, in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a body, which really wants but little. ~ Edmund Burke

While you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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. ~ Oliver Burkeman

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. ~ Seneca.

(how well Stoicism hides what one does not possess!); ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Equanimity is often mistaken for depression. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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. ~ Epictetus

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. ~ Marcus Aurelius

So the life of a philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. ~ Seneca.

He who despises life is his life's master. ~ Pierre Corneille

Death is the release of an organism from the prison of life. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle. ~ Michael Chabon

Most people have given back to life the power to make themselves happy. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What's the good of being stoical if nobody notices? ~ Mason Cooley

That passion is better than stoicism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is Stoicism that demands a closed universe, not the Bible. ~ Richard J. Foster

We prefer our way into things such as regret, unhappiness, and anxiety. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated. ~ Seneca.

Epictetus has had a long-standing resonance in the United States; his uncompromising moral rigour chimed in well with Protestant Christian beliefs and the ethical individualism that has been a persistent vein in American culture. His admirers ranged from John Harvard and Thomas Jefferson in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the nineteenth. More recently, Vice-Admiral James Stockdale wrote movingly of how his study of Epictetus at Stanford University enabled him to survive the psychological pressure of prolonged torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. Stockdale's story formed the basis for a light-hearted treatment of the moral power of Stoicism in Tom Wolfe's novel A Man in Full (1998).52 ~ Epictetus

One man's bad day is another man's good night. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Heartless' is a label that is all too often wrongly given to someone who is rational by someone who is emotional. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breeze: sometimes we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine. ~ Seneca.

...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

Our inability to imagine the length of the rest of existence magnifies our problems. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realise the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again. ~ Marcus Aurelius

In any case I just cannot imagine attaching so much importance to any food or treat that I would grow irate or bitter at the mention of the suffering of animals. A pig to me will always seem more important than a pork rind. There is the risk here of confusing realism with cynicism, moral stoicism with moral sloth, of letting oneself become jaded and lazy and self-satisfied
what used to be called an 'appetitive' person. ~ Matthew Scully

A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Psychopaths, skillful as they are at manipulating others, have trouble with emotional regulation and generally screw up at either extreme: theatrical histrionics or cold stoicism. ~ Jonathan Kellerman

In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires. Stoicism ~ Piper Kerman

Disgraceful if, in this life where your body does not fail, your soul should fail you first. ~ Marcus Aurelius

At any given moment, it is a beautiful day in many parts of the world. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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, everyday survival in prison required getting over, I could do that too. This is what was approvingly described by my fellow prisoners as 'street-smarts,' as in 'You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Piper's got street-smarts. ~ Piper Kerman

Just as I prepared to stand and bow, a woman appeared with a miniature coffee cup in her hand.
She offered it to me.
As I took it, I noticed two things:
Bugs crawling on the ground and the men approving of me by snapping their fingers.
I bowed and took a sip of the coffee and almost fainted.
I had a cockroach on my tongue.
I looked at the peoples' faces and I could not spit it out.
My grandmother would have pushed away the grave's dirt and traveled by willpower to show me her face of abject disappointment.
I could not bear that.
I opened my throat and drank the cup dry.
I counted four cockroaches. ~ Maya Angelou

I hear my silence talked of in every lane;
The suppression of a cry is itself a cry of pain. ~ Darshan Singh

The second best thing to not chasing success is chasing success that was defined by you, not for you. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It is humbling to realize that what you hate (the most) about someone is actually what they love (the most) about themselves. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation. ~ Raymond E. Feist

We have control over when, how, and where to plant a seed, not over what it will become. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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. ~ Justin Cronin

Flaubert teaches you to gave upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on the pillow of doubt; he teaches you to dissect out the constituent parts of reality, and to observe the Nature is always a mixture of genres; he teaches you the most exact use of language; he teaches you not to approach a book in search of moral or social pills
literature is not a pharmacopoeia; he teaches the pre-eminence of Truth, Beauty, Feeling and Style. And if you study his private life, he teaches courage, stoicism, friendship; the importance of intelligence, skepticism and wit; the folly of cheap patriotism; the virtue of being able to remain by yourself in your own room; the hatred of hypocrisy; distrust of the doctrinaire; the need for plain speaking. ~ Julian Barnes

He yawned; he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his youth. Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism
all the aids whereby a man may savor, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life ... 'I have attained the age of reason. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

A blind man's thoughts almost never have anything to do with the things he is facing. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The probability of something not happening does not decrease as we increase the number of times we worry about the possibility of it happening. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Rain watched as his five best warriors squeezed into the tiny parlor, picked their way through the jungle of wedding gifts as if tiptoeing through a nest of Drogan sand vipers, and settled down with stone-faced stoicism to proceed with the humiliating un-warrior-like task of opening presents ...
Five lethal glances speared him. For the first time in a thousand years, Rain Tairen Soul threw back his head and laughed. ~ C.L. Wilson

But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Elinor, where is your heart? ~ Jane Austen

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

Everything worthwhile in your life draws its meaning from the fact you will die. ~ Derren Brown

Regard [a friend] as loyal, and you will make him loyal. ~ Seneca.

Misfortune nobly born is good fortune. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Seneca's version of that Stoicism is antifragility from fate. No downside from Lady Fortuna, plenty of upside. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

(On stoicism) "As a matter of fact, the experiment has already started. Yesterday at lunch I had a smaller piece of pecan pie than usual, and I passed up the scoop of vanilla ice cream entirely. It's like I said in my essay. 'Just as nature abhors a vacuum, a Stoic abhors satiety.' What's more, as you may have noticed, I've stopped smoking."
"But not swearing."
"I'm working on it."
...
"The stoics believed that in bearing pain without complain, a mortal might transcend the mundane world and enter the eternal matrix of divine thought. ~ James K. Morrow

Remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have you cannot lose. ~ Marcus Aurelius

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. ~ Koren Zailckas

Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom. ~ Bergen Evans