February 28th Reading from The Daily Stoic - When You Lose Control

"The soul is like a bowl of water, and our impressions are like the ray of light falling upon the water. When the water is troubled, it appears that the light itself is moved too, but it isn't. So, when a person loses their composure, it isn't their skills and virtues that are troubled, but the spirit in which they exist, and when that spirit calms down so do those things."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.3.20-22

February 27th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Cultivating Indifference Where Others Grow Passion

"Of all the things that are, some are good, others bad, and yet others indifferent. The good are virtues and all that share in them; the bad are vices and all that indulge them; the indifferent lie in between virtue and vice and include wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.19.12b-13

February 26th Reading from The Daily Stoic - To Each His Own

"Another has done me wrong? Let him see to it. He has his own tendencies, and his own affairs. What I have now is what common nature has willed, and what I endeavor to accomplish now is what my nature wills."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.25

February 25th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Smoke and Dust of Myth

"Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction. Then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend . . ."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.27

"Cum Carum Moneas"

     My daily reading from Brevissima today was #170, given the title "Cum Carum Moneas" ("When You Advise Someone Dear To You") by the editor (originally from The Distichs of Cato 1.9, a 4th century work). I liked this one. The Latin runs thus:

Cum moneas aliquem nec se velit ille moneri,

Si tibi sit carus, noli desistere coeptis.

Roughly rendered in English:

When you advise [or "admonish"] someone and he does not wish to be advised ["admonished"],

If he is dear to you, do not hold back from what you have begun.

February 24th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Real Source of Harm

"Keep in mind that it isn't the one who has it in for you and takes a swipe that harms you, but rather the harm comes from your own belief about the abuse. So when someone arouses your anger, know that it's really your own opinion fueling it. Instead, make it your first response not to be carried away by such impressions, for with time and distance self-mastery is more easily achieved."

~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 20

February 23rd Reading from The Daily Stoic - Circumstances Have No Care For Our Feelings

"You shouldn't give any circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don't care at all."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.38

February 22nd Reading from The Daily Stoic - What's Better Left Unsaid

"Cato practiced the kind of speech capable of moving the masses, believing proper political philosophy takes care like any great city to maintain the warlike element. But he was never seen practicing in front of others, and no one ever heard him rehearse a speech. When he was told that people blamed him for his silence, he replied, 'Better they not blame my life. I begin to speak only when I'm certain what I'll say isn't better left unsaid'."

~ Plutarch, Cato the Younger, 4

February 21st Reading from The Daily Stoic - Wish Not, Want Not

"Remember that it's not only the desire for wealth and positions that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn't matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it subjugates us to another . . . where our heart is set, there our impediment lies."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.1-2; 15

February 20th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Grand Parade of Desire

"Robbers, perverts, killers, and tyrants - gather for your inspection their so-called pleasures!"

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.34

February 19th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Banquet of Life

"Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don't stop it. It hasn't yet come? Don't burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealth - one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods."

~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 15

February 18th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Prepare for the Storm

"This is the true athlete - the person in rigorous training against false impressions. Remain firm, you who suffer, don't be kidnapped by your impressions! The struggle is great, the task divine - to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.27-28

February 17th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Enemy of Happiness

"It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don't have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn't be any hunger or thirst."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.17

February 16th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Don't Make Things Harder Than They Need To Be!

"If someone asks you how to write your name, would you bark out each letter? And if they get angry, would you then return the anger? Wouldn't you rather gently spell out each letter for them? So then, remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty . . . just methodically complete your task."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.26

February 15th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Only Bad Dreams

"Clear your mind and get a hold on yourself and, as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting you, wake up and see that what's there is just like those dreams."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.31

February 14th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Think Before You Act

"For to be wise is only one thing - to fix our attention on our intelligence, which guides all things everywhere."

~ Heraclitus, quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 9.1

February 13th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Pleasure Can Become Punishment

"Whenever you get an impression of some pleasure, as with any impression, guard yourself from being carried away by it, let it await your action, give yourself a pause. After that. bring to mind both times, first when you have enjoyed the pleasure, and later when you will regret it and hate yourself. Then compare to those the joy and satisfaction you'd feel for abstaining altogether. However, if a seemingly appropriate time arises to act on it, don't be overcome by its comfort, pleasantness, and allure - but against all of this, how much better the consciousness of conquering it."

~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 34

February 12th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Protect Your Peace of Mind

"Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these things?"

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 4.3.6b-8 

February 11th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Hero or Nero?

"Our soul is sometimes a king, and sometimes a tyrant. A king, by attending to what is honorable, protects the good health of the body in its care, and gives it no base or sordid command. But an uncontrolled, desire-fueled, over-indulged soul is turned from a king into that most feared and detested thing - a tyrant."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 114.24

February 10th Reading from The Daily Stoic - "Anger Is Bad Fuel"

"There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant, if foiled, none more insane - since it's not driven back by weariness even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary and it turns its teeth on itself."

~ Seneca, On Anger, 3.1.5

February 9th Reading from The Daily Stoic - You Don't Have To Have An Opinion

"We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind - for things have no natural power to shape our judgments."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.52

February 8th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Did That Make You Feel Better?

"You cry, I'm suffering severe pain! Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way?"

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 78.17

February 7th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Fear Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

"Many are harmed by fear itself, and many have come to their fate while dreading fate."

~ Seneca, Oedipus, 992

February 6th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Don't Seek Out Strife

"I don't agree with those who plunge headlong into the middle of the flood and who, accepting a turbulent life, struggle daily in great spirit with difficult circumstances. The wise person will endure that, but won't choose it - choosing to be at peace, rather than at war."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 28.7

February 5th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Steady Your Impulses

"Don't be bounced around, but submit every impulse to the claims of justice, and protect your clear conviction in every appearance."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.22

February 4th Reading from The Daily Stoic - On Being Invincible

"Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 1.18.21

February 3rd Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Source of Your Anxiety

"When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person was not wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?"

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.13.1

"A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever" (Euripides, Bacchae, 881)

ὅ τι καλὸν φίλον ἀεί ("A thing of beauty is a joy forever") ~ Euripides, Bacchae 881

February 2nd Reading from The Daily Stoic - A Proper Frame of Mind

"Frame your thoughts like this - you are an old person, you won't let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you'll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future,"

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.2

February 1st Reading from The Daily Stoic - For The Hot-Headed Man

"Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on - it isn't manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn't give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance - unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.18.5b

January 31st Reading from The Daily Stoic - Philosophy As Medicine of the Soul

"Don't return to philosophy as a task-master, but as patients who seek out relief in a treatment of sore eyes, or a dressing for a burn, or from an ointment. Regarding it this way, you'll obey reason without putting it on display and rest easy in its care."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.9