Stoicism Quotes

• If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Inspirational, Positive, Depression

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  It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Life, Moving On, Death

  Marcus Aurelius (2015). “Meditations”, p.144, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Thrive, Feels, Havens

  Marcus Aurelius (2002). “Meditations: A New Translation”, p.39, Modern Library

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

  Epictetus

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Epictetus (1807). “The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses in Four Books Preserved by Arrian, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.111

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• The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Way, Action, Obstacles

  Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (2012). “The Modern Library Collection of Greek and Roman Philosophy 3-Book Bundle: Meditations; Selected Dialogues of Plato; The Basic Works of Aristotle”, p.162, Modern Library

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• The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

  Colin Wilson

  Rain, Men, Average

  "Another Kind of Life; Victorian Giants review - birth of the outsider" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. March 11, 2018.

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• Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Emotion, Elimination

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• He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

  Epictetus

  Positive, Happiness, Thank You

  Epictetus (2012). “Enchiridion”, p.48, Courier Corporation

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• A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Pain, Mistake, Desire

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• 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.

  Seneca the Younger

  Motivational, Men, Thinking

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• In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases.

  Seneca the Younger

  Adversity, Giving, Teeth

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• Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.

  Seneca the Younger

  Despair

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• Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend...or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Running, Thinking, Dust

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• It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

  Seneca the Younger

  Positivity, Mind, Unconquerable

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• Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Life, Strength, Believe

  Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome), Gerald Henry Rendall (1907). “Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to himself: in English”

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• Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.

  Bergen Evans

  Wisdom, Madness, Cynicism

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• So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Pleasure, Individual

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• I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.

  Walt Whitman

  Softball, Sports, Baseball

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• Let a man accept his destiny, No pity and no tears.

  Euripides

  Destiny, Men, Tears

  Euripides (1942). “Euripides”

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• He who despises life is his life's master.

  Pierre Corneille

  Life Is, Masters, Despise

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• Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

  Marquis de Sade

  Philosophy, Character, Simple

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• If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Religious, Mean, Ideas

  Henry David Thoreau (1894). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: With Bibliographical Introductions and Full Indexes”

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• The basic philosophy of stoicism is that you have nothing real external to your own consciousness, that the only thing real is in fact your consciousness.

  Roger Avary

  Philosophy, Real, Facts

  "Roger Avary’s First Post-Prison Interview: Where His Career Will Take Him Next". Interview with Eric Kohn, www.indiewire.com. August 6, 2012.

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• Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Sympathy, Christian, Pain

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• I believe Stoicism can help anyone who takes it seriously and begins to practice it. It will help them flourish because it will provide them with a compass for navigating life, a general, flexible, framework to set priorities, and a set of techniques to achieve serenity and equanimity.

  Massimo Pigliucci

  Believe, Priorities, Serenity

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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