The Art of Stoicism

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MARCUS AURELIUS

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

If it doesn't harm your character, how can it harm your life?

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

1/2 When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and...

2/2 have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own, not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.

SENECA

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable.

1/2 True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.

2/2 The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

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.

EPICTETUS

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.