November 7th Reading from The Daily Stoic - How To Be Powerful

"Don't trust in your reputation, money, or position, but in the strength that is yours - namely, your judgments about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and powerful."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.26.34-35

November 6th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Someone Else Is Spinning The Thread

"If the breaking of the day sees someone proud,
 The ending day seems them brought low.
 No one should put too much trust in triumph,
 No one should give up hope of trials improving.
 Clotho mixes one with the other and stops
 Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around.
 No one has had so much divine favor
 That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow.
 God keeps our lives hurtling on,
 Spinning in a whirlwind."

~ Seneca, Thyestes, 613

November 5th Reading from The Daily Stoic - A Higher Power

"This is the very thing that makes up the virtue of the happy person and a well-flowing life - when the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe."

~ Chrysippus, quoted in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.88

November 4th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Not Good, Nor Bad

"There is no evil in things changing, just as there is no good in persisting in a new state."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.42

November 3rd Reading from The Daily Stoic - Following The Doctor's Orders

"Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happened to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.8

Personal Note: As is so often the case, the quote taken out of the full context of Marcus Aurelius' thought and Stoic teaching doesn't sound good. Disease is just prescribed by nature, or the will of God? If I'm disabled or impaired, God wills it, so that's it? Not at all what he was saying! Marcus Aurelius would have said that if one is ill, one has a duty and responsibility to try to become well, if possible. What he's talking about is that if it is not possible to improve a situation, accepting that and moving on, or even better, learning from the experience. If you suffer what appear to be misfortunes, by all means try to overcome them - but if you fail to do so, realize that the effort made you stronger, and that maybe that's all you walk away with at this time. 

November 2nd Reading from The Daily Stoic - Binding Our Wishes To What Will be

"But I haven't at any time been hindered in my will, nor forced against it. And how is this possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such is my will. He wills that I should choose something, so do I. He wills that I reach for something, or something be given to me - I wish for the same. What God doesn't will, I do not wish for."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.89

Personal note: A lot of Stoics read this and think they have to be completely passive, fatalistic, accepting any fate that befalls without action. Taken out of context like this, it seems like that is what Epictetus is saying. But a more complete reading of Stoicism will lead the Stoic to the conclusion that one has a moral duty, an imperative, to take action in accordance with Virtue - to try to make the world a better place, whenever possible. The key is that when it is not possible - when you try to make the world better and fail - you accept the failure and move on to the next attempt. No wallowing in regret that matters do not stand differently. 

November 1st Reading from The Daily Stoic - Accepting What Is

"Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will - then your life will flow well."
~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 8

"It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance and a sense of gratitude. Without gratitude what is the point of seeing, and without seeing what is the object of gratitude?"
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 1.6.1-2