Stoicism Quotes

Stoicism Quotes

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Warriors should suffer their pain silently.”

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining (the making of a long, high-pitched cry or sound) is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.”

“People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled (lose blood from the body as a result of injury or illness) all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked (strike) whomever they despised (hate), kissed strangers, revealed themselves?”

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”

“Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.”

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

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?

A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”

“Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Where is your heart?”

“Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.”

“It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”

“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.”

“You should … live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.”

“Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by, don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.”

“For death remembered should be like a mirror, who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.”

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
tags: misfortune, stoicism95 likesLike
T.H. White
“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.”
― T.H. White, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me
tags: cynicism, dichotomy, happiness, pain, stoicism81 likesLike
Seneca
“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
tags: philosophy, stoic, stoicism58 likesLike
Marcus Aurelius
“From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
tags: philosophy, stoicism46 likesLike
Criss Jami
“I've come to the point where I never feel the need to stop and evaluate whether or not I am happy. I'm just 'being', and without question, by default, it works.”
Epictetus
“If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
tags: philosophy, reputation, stoic, stoicism32 likesLike
Seneca
“Maximum remedium est irae mora.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
tags: anger, stoicism23 likesLike
Epictetus
“It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body; for it is better to die than to live badly.”
― Epictetus
tags: philosophy-of-life, stoicism22 likesLike
Koren Zailckas
“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, Fury: A Memoir
tags: boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, love, relationships, stoicism21 likesLike
“There was a lot of pretense floating around; not just with aunties and all that but with emotions and how people saw you. They had a point. There's a lot to learn from that generation -- the stoic approach. I think it's disgusting how they've been forgotten about in this way. It's the American hippies' fault, they saw an in there, a way of making money out of bad moods. That's all it is most of the time. You can't expect to feel cock-a-hoop every minute of every day. My mam and dad's generation understood this. They were just thankful the bombs had stopped threatening their lives. They just wanted to get on with living.”
― Mark E. Smith, Renegade
tags: psychology, stoicism13 likesLike
Seneca
“Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.”
― Seneca, Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (Illustrated. Newly revised text. Includes Image Gallery + Audio): All Three Volumes
tags: fate, philosophy, reform, stoic, stoicism12 likesLike
Emil M. Cioran
“Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la sagesse est le but principal de la vie et c'est pourquoi je reviens toujours aux stoïciens. Ils ont atteint la sagesse, on ne peut donc plus les appeler des philosophes au sens propre du terme. De mon point de vue, la sagesse est le terme naturel de la philosophie, sa fin dans les deux sens du mot. Une philosophie finit en sagesse et par là même disparaît.”
― Emil Cioran, Oeuvres
tags: purpose-of-life, stoicism, wisdom12 likesLike
“Submission, when it is submission to the truth — and when the truth is known to be both beautiful and merciful — has nothing in common with fatalism or stoicism as these terms are understood in the Western tradition, because its motivation is different. According to Fakhr ad-Din ar-RazT, one of the great commentators upon the Quran: The worship of the eyes is
weeping, the worship of the ears is listening, the worship of the tongue is praise, the worship of the hands is giving, the worship of the body is effort, the worship of the heart is fear and hope, and the worship of the spirit is surrender and satisfaction in Allah.”
― Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi, Gai Eaton
tags: allah, fatalism, islam, quran, stoicism, worship12 likesLike
Perry Anderson
“[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.”
― Perry Anderson, Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas
tags: consolation, politics, realism, resistance-movement, silver-linings, stoicism11 likesLike
Epictetus
“Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life.”
― Epictetus
tags: epictetus, philosophy, quotes, robin-hard-revised-translation, stoicism8 likesLike
Marcus Aurelius
“Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
tags: stoicism5 likesLike
Seneca
“For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism3 likesLike
Epictetus
“For in this Case, we are not to give Credit to the Many, who say, that none ought to be educated but the Free; but rather to the Philosophers, who say, that the Well-educated alone are free.”
― Epictetus, All the Works of Epictetus
tags: educated, education, free, freedom, philosophers, philosophy, stoicism3 likesLike
Pierre Hadot
“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, What Is Ancient Philosophy?
tags: cynicism, epicureanism, philosophy, skepticism, socrates, stoicism, therapy2 likesLike
Marcus Aurelius
“The sun appears to pour itself down, and indeed its light pours in all direction, but the stream does not run out. This pouring is linear extension: that is why its beams are called rays, because they radiate in extended lines. You can see what a ray is if you observe the sun's light entering a dark room through a narrow opening. It extends in a straight line and impacts, so to speak, on any solid body in its path which blocks passage through the air on the other side: it settles there and does not slip off or fall.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
tags: stoicism2 likesLike
Seneca
“All vices are at odds with nature.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism1 likesLike
Seneca
“Let me indicate here how men can prove that their words are their own: let them put their
preaching into practice”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“[E]verything which went beyond our actual needs was just so much unnecessary weight, a burden to the man who had to carry it.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“People prone to every fault they denounce are walking advertisements of the uselessness of their training. That kind of man can be of no more help to me as an instructor than a steersman who is seasick in a storm[...]. What good to me is a vomiting and stupefied helmsman? [...] What is needed is a steering hand, not talking.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“[A] man is wealthy if he has attuned himself to his restricted means and has made himself rich on little.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“More active and commendable still is the person who is waiting for the daylight and intercepts the first rays of the sun; shame on him who lies in bed dozing when the sun is high in the sky, whose waking hours commence in the middle of the day.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“Many are the things that have caused terror during the night and been turned into matters of laughter with the coming of daylight.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“[T]he man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody's lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“To lose someone you love is something you'll regard as the hardest of all blows to bear, while all the time this will be as silly as crying because the leaves fall from the beautiful trees that add to the charm of your home.
[...] At one moment chance will carry off one of them, at another moment another; but the falling of the leaves is not difficult
to bear, since they grow again, and it is no more hard to bear the loss of those whom you love and regard as brightening your existence; for even if they do not grow again they are replaced. "But their successors will never be quite the same." No, and neither will you.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
tags: stoicism0 likesLike
Seneca
“It is in no man's power to have whatever he wants; but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn't got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way.”

fear into prudence