Best 232 quotes in «stoicism quotes» category

You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, "What are your thinking about?" you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

You should, I need hardly say, live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.

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

stoicism is the fundamental characteristic of the French.

stoicism and silence does not serve us nor our communities, only the forces of things as they are.

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

[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.

Hillary Clinton appears to believe in a form of stoicism - which is a tried and true life philosophy.

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.

After failure, it is possible to keep going– and to fail better.

A blind man’s thoughts almost never have anything to do with the things he is facing.

A fool is a man who disregards legacy.

Ambition: The willingness to continually question and assess one’s acceptance and contentment with their place in life; conjunct with the willingness to take action should a resolvable discrepancy between one’s values and one’s current standing, present itself. By extension, an ambitious person is someone who has to the best of their abilities thoughtfully defined their values and continues on to do whatever is reasonably possible to fully embrace who they are in life.

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.

A man whose mind has completely left childhood behind would not be surprised if he were to walk in on his wife having sex with her father … or with his mother.

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

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.

All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.

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

And here lies the essential difference 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.

And here are two of the most immediately useful thoughts you will dip into. First that things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert; anxieties can only come from your internal judgement. Second, hat all these things you see will change almost as you look at them, and then will be no more. Constantly bring to mind all that you yourself have already seen changed. The universe is change: life is judgement.

A properly educated leader, especially when harassed and under pressure, will know from his study of history and the classics that circumstances very much like those he is encountering have occurred from time to time on this earth since the beginning of history. He will avoid the self-indulgent error of seeing himself in a predicament so unprecedented, so unique, as to justify his making an exception to law, custom or morality in favor of himself. The making of such exceptions has been the theme of public life throughout much of our lifetimes. For twenty years, we've been surrounded by gamesmen unable to cope with the wisdom of the ages. They make exceptions to law and custom in favor of themselves because they choose to view ordinary dilemmas as unprecedented crises.

[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.

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

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.

Being a stoic does not mean being a robot. Being a stoic means remaining calm both at the height of pleasure and the depths of misery.

Being in a hurry does not slow down time.

But Moominmamma was quite unperturbed. "Well, well!" she said, "it seems to me that our guests are having a very good time." "I hope so," replied Moominpappa. "Pass me a banana, please dear.

Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result.

Christianity is not a therapy for those who wish never to be upset (177).

[C]ling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take full not of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do.

Common man's patience will bring him more happiness than common man's power.

Consider what intemperate lovers undergo for the sake of evil desires, and how much exertion others expend for the sake of making profit, and how much suffering those who are pursuing fame endure, and bear in mind that all of these people submit to all kinds of toil and hardship voluntarily. Is it then not monstrous that they for no honorable reward endure such things, while we for the sake of the ideal good - that is not only the avoidance of evil such as wrecks our lives, but also the acquisition of virtue, which we may call the provider of all goods -- are not ready to bear every hardship? And yet would not anyone admit how much better it is, in place of exerting oneself to win someone else's wife, to exert oneself the discipline of one's desires; in place of enduring hardships for the sake of money, the train oneself to want little; instead of giving oneself trouble about getting notoriety; instead of trying to find a way to injure an envied person, to enquire how not to envy anyone; and instead of slaving, as sycophants do, to win false friends, to undergo suffering in order to possess true friends? Since toil and hardship are a necessity for all, both for those who seek better and worse, it is preposterous that those pursuing the better are not much more eager in their efforts than those for whom there is small hope of reward for all their pains. ... It remains for me to say that who is unwilling to exert himself almost always convicts himself as unworthy of good, since all good is gained by toil.

Destroying the seeds of disappointment requires you to unexpect the expected.

Detente particularmente en cada una de las acciones que haces y pregúntate si la muerte es terrible porque te priva de eso.

Disturbance comes only from within- from our own perceptions. Everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist

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

Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job.

During the Great Depression, the philosophy of grin-and-bear-it became a national coping mechanism.

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

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.

Enlightenment does not mean making the most of bad situations. It means knowing that every situation is neither good nor bad.

Even in the longest life real living is the least portion thereof.

Even the busiest bee does not move from one flower to another as often as an untamed mind moves from one thought to another.

Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you wish to be a good reader, read; if you wish to be a good writer, write. If you should give up reading for thirty days one after the other, and be engaged in something else, you will know what happens. So also if you lie in bed for ten days, get up and try to take a rather long walk, and you will see how wobbly your legs are. In general, therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it; if you want not to do something, refrain from doing it, and accustom yourself to something else instead.

Every second is a step away from our mothers’ wombs towards our own tombs.

Expectation is the only seed of disappointment.

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

As things are, there is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she didn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.

Feeling sorry for our bodies ought to be the closest we get to feeling sorry for ourselves.