Letters From A Stoic Quotes
"Every pleasure defers till its last its greatest delights."
"Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing."
"To procure friendship only for better and not for worse is to rob it of all its dignity."
"The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids. It is homegrown, wholly self-developed."
"Self-contented as he is, then, he does need friends – but not to enable him to lead a happy life."
"Cultivate an asset which the passing of time itself improves."
"The mind has to be given some time off, but in such a way that it may be refreshed, not relaxed till it goes to pieces."
"We are born with a sense of the pleasantness of friendship just as of other things."
"It is the final glass which pleases the inveterate drinker, the one that sets the crowning touch on his intoxication and sends him off into oblivion."
"Our purpose in all this is not to give the voice, exercise, but to make it give us exercise."
"The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future."
"So continually remind yourself, Lucilius, of the many things you have achieved."
"Philosophy is not carried on with the object of taking the boredom out of leisure. It moulds and builds the personality."
"Every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to philosophy."
"A sound mind can neither be bought nor borrowed."
"It’s the person who’s awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one’s failings is a sign of health."
"The only true serenity is the one which represents the free development of a sound mind."
"You should live for the other person if you wish to live for yourself."
"No one can lead a happy life if he thinks only of himself and turns everything to his own purposes."
"Let us see to it that the recollection of those we have lost becomes a pleasure to us."
"As my teacher Attalus used to say, ‘In the pleasure we find in the memory of departed friends there is a resemblance to the way in which certain bitter fruits are agreeable."
"Let us therefore go all out to make the most of friends, since no one can tell how long we shall have the opportunity."
"Can you stand people who treat their friends with complete neglect and then mourn them to distraction, never caring about anyone unless they have lost him?"
"A person, moreover, who has not been able to care about more than one friend cannot have cared even about that one too much."
"You have buried someone you loved. Now look for someone to love."
"Even a person who has not deliberately put an end to his grief finds an end to it in the passing of time."
"Much as you may wish to, you will not be able to keep it up for very long, so give it up as early as possible."
"Nothing makes itself unpopular quite so quickly as a person’s grief."
"For to it this body of ours is a burden and a torment."
"Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never shall it drive me to any pretence unworthy of a good man."
"Let us meet with bravery whatever may befall us."
"It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will – only make sure that you round it off with a good ending."
"There are times when even to live is an act of bravery."
"Every life without exception is a short one."
"A life spent viewing all the variety, the majesty, the sublimity in things around us can never succumb to ennui."
"A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is."
"Life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy."
"The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort."
"Follow nature and you will feel no need of craftsmen."
"Nature suffices for all she asks of us. Luxury has turned her back on nature."
"Luxury has turned her back on nature, daily urging herself on and growing through all the centuries."
"It is incredible how easily even great men can be carried away from the truth by the sheer pleasure of holding forth on a subject."
"Nature demanded nothing hard from us, and nothing needs painful contriving to enable life to be kept going."
"We were born into a world in which things were ready to our hands; it is we who have made everything difficult to come by."
"With everything the limit corresponded to the need."
"It is we, and no one else, who have made those same things costly, spectacular and obtainable only by means of a large number of full-scale techniques."
"The philosophy I speak of is not the one which takes the citizen out of public life and the gods out of the world we live in, but the philosophy which thinks nothing good unless it is honourable."
"For the things upon which you base any judgement on a person’s psychology must be things peculiar to himself, things that spring from his own nature."
"See, then, that the spirit is well looked after. Our thoughts and our words proceed from it."
"The spirit is our queen. So long as she is unharmed, the rest remains at its post, obedient and submissive."
"It is essential to make oneself used to putting up with a little."
"Let us fight the battle the other way round – retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us."
"Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are."
"One shouldn’t, accordingly, eat until hunger demands."
"Philosophy has no business to supply vice with excuses; a sick man who is encouraged to live in a reckless manner by his doctor has not a hope of getting well."