October 31st Reading from The Daily Stoic - You Were Born Good

"The human being is born with an inclination toward virtue."

~ Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 2.7.1-2

October 30th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Who Gets The Lion's Share?

"Aren't you ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnants of your life and to dedicate to wisdom only that time that can't be directed to business?"

~ Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 3.5b

October 29th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Character Is Fate

"Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 47.15b

October 28th Reading from The Daily Stoic - We Were Made For Each Other

"You'll more quickly find an earthly thing kept from the earth than you will a person cut off from  other human beings."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.9.3

October 27th Reading from The Daily Stoic - We Reap What We Sow

"Crimes often return to their teacher."

~ Seneca, Thyestes, 311

October 26th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Three Parts, One Aim

"The best and the greatest number of authors have asserted that philosophy consists of three parts: the moral, the natural, and the rational. The first puts the soul in order. The second thoroughly examines the natural order of things. The third inquires into the proper meaning of words, and their arrangements and proofs which keep falsehoods from creeping in to replace truth."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 89.9

October 25th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Two Tasks

"What, then, makes a person free from hindrance and self-determining? For wealth doesn't, neither does high office, state or kingdom - rather, something else must be found . . . in the case of living, it is the knowledge of how to live."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.62-64

October 24th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Fountain of Goodness

"Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.59

October 23rd Reading from The Daily Stoic - Show The Qualities You Were Made For

"People aren't in awe of your sharp mind? So be it. But you have many other qualities you can't claim to have been deprived of at birth. Display then those qualities in your own power: honesty, dignity, endurance, chastity, contentment,  frugality, kindness, freedom, persistence, avoiding gossip, and magnanimity."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.5

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Evening Text for Reflection

"Glad and cheerful, let us say, as we go to our rest: ‘I have finished living; I have run the course that
fortune set for me’. If God gives us another day, let us receive it with joy. The happiest person,
who owns himself more fully, is the one who waits for the next day without anxiety. Anyone who
can say, ‘I have had my life’ rises with a bonus, receiving one more day."

~ Seneca, Letters, 12.9

October 22nd Reading from The Daily Stoic - It's Easy To Get Better, But Better At What?

"So someone's good at taking down an opponent, but that doesn't make them any more community-minded, or modest, or well-prepared for any circumstance, or more tolerant of the faults of others."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.52

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Morning Text for Reflection

"Be like the headland, on which the waves break constantly, which still stands firm, while the
foaming waters are put to rest around it. ‘It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.’ On the
contrary, say, ‘It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without
getting upset, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of the future.’ This kind of event could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have borne it without getting upset."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.49

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Evening Text for Reflection

"I travel along nature’s way until I fall down and take my rest, breathing out my last into the air,
from which I draw my daily breath, and falling down to that earth from which my father drew his
seed, my mother her blood and my nurse her milk, and from which for so many years I have taken
my daily food and drink, the earth which carries my footsteps and which I have used to the full in
so many ways."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.4

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Morning Text for Reflection

"The works of the gods are full of providence, and the works of fortune are not separate from nature
or the interweaving and intertwining of the things governed by providence. Everything flows from
there. Further factors are necessity and the benefit of the whole universe, of which you are a part.
What is brought by the nature of the whole and what maintains that nature is good for each part of
nature. Just as the changes in the elements maintain the universe so too do the changes in the
compounds."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.3

October 21st Reading from The Daily Stoic - Heroes, Here And Now

"Such behavior! People don't want to praise their contemporaries whose lives they actually share, but hold great expectations for the praise of future generations - people they haven't met or ever will! This is akin to being upset that the past generation didn't praise you."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.18

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Evening Text for Reflection

"What benefits each of us is what is in line with our constitution and nature; my nature is rational
and political. As Antoninus, my city and fatherland is Rome, as a human being it is the universe. It
is only what benefits these cities which is good for me."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.44

October 20th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Marks of the Good Life

"You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere - not in logic, nor in wealth, fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. How is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage, and freedom, and nothing evil except what destroys these things."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.1.(5)

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Morning Text for Reflection

"It is important to understand that nature creates in parents affection for their children; and parental
affection is the source from which we trace the shared community of the human race … As it is
obvious that it is natural to us to shrink from pain, so it is clear that we derive from nature itself the
motive to love those to whom we have given birth. From this motive is developed the mutual
concern which unites human beings as such. The fact of their common humanity means that one
person should feel another to be his relative."

~ Cicero, On Ends, 3.62-3

Stoic Week 2017, Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Evening Text for Reflection

"Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, think of the good qualities of those who live with you:
such as the energy of one, the decency of another, the generosity of another, and some other quality
in someone else. There is nothing so cheering as the images of the virtues displayed in the
characters of those who live with you, and grouped together as far as possible. So you should keep them ready at hand."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.48

Stoic Week 2017, Thursday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Thursday Morning Text for Reflection

"Say to yourself first thing in the morning: I shall meet with people who are meddling, ungrateful,
violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable. They are subject to these faults because of their
ignorance of what is good and bad. But I have recognised the nature of the good and seen that it is
the right, and the nature of the bad and seen that it is the wrong, and the nature of the wrongdoer
himself, and seen that he is related to me, not because he has the same blood or seed, but because
he shares in the same mind and portion of divinity. So I cannot be harmed by any of them, as no
one will involve me in what is wrong. Nor can I be angry with my relative or hate him. We were
born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So
to work against each other is contrary to nature; and resentment and rejection count as working
against someone."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1

October 19th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Good Habits Drive Out Bad Habits

"Since habit is such a powerful influence, and we're used to pursuing our impulses to gain and avoid outside our own choice, we should set up a contrary habit against that, and where appearances are really slippery, use the counterforce of our training."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.12.6

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Evening Text for Reflection

"Every habit and faculty is formed or strengthened by the corresponding act – walking makes you
walk better, running makes you a better runner. If you want to be literate, read, if you want to be a
painter, paint. Go a month without reading, occupied with something else, and you'll see what the
result is. And if you're laid up a mere ten days, when you get up and try to walk any distance, you'll
find your legs barely able to support you. So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you
don't like doing something, make a habit of doing something different. The same goes for the
affairs of the mind... So if you don't want to be hot-tempered, don't feed your temper, or multiply
incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which
you don't get angry. 'I used to be angry every day, then only every other day, then every third...' If
you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one,
until it is wiped out altogether. 'I didn't lose my temper this day, or the next, and not for two, then
three months in succession.' If you can say that, you are now in excellent health, believe me."

 ~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Morning Text for Reflection

"If you find anything in human life better than justice, truthfulness, self-control, courage… turn to it
with all your heart and enjoy the supreme good that you have found… but if you find all other
things to be trivial and valueless in comparison with virtue give no room to anything else, since
once you turn towards that and divert from your proper path, you will no longer be able without
inner conflict to give the highest honour to that which is properly good. It is not right to set up as a
rival to the rational and social good [virtue] anything alien its nature, such as the praise of the
many or positions of power, wealth or enjoyment of pleasures."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.6

October 18th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Frenemies

"There's nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. Beware false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward, and well meaning it should show in your eyes and not escape notice."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.15

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Evening Text For Reflection

"Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation,
desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever forms part of our activity. Not within our power are our
body, possessions, reputation, social status, and, in a word, whatever does not form part of our
activity… if you only regard that which is your own as being your own and that which isn’t your
own as belonging to others (as is indeed the case), no one will ever be able to force you to do
things, no one will create obstacles for you, you’ll find fault with no one, you’ll criticise no one,
you’ll do nothing against your will, you’ll have no enemy, and no one will ever harm you because

no harm can affect you."

~ Epictetus, Handbook, 1

October 17th Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Benefit of Kindness

"A benefit should be kept like a buried treasure, only to be dug up in necessity . . . Nature bids us to do well by all . . . Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness."

~ Seneca, On the Happy Life, 24.2-3

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Morning Text for Reflection

"Ethics has three branches. The first assigns to each thing its proper value and determines what it is
worth … The second deals with motives, and the third with actions. So the objectives of ethics are,
first, to enable you to judge the value of each thing; second, to enable you to have a well-adjusted
and controlled motive towards them; and, third, to enable you to achieve harmony between your

motive and your action so that you can be consistent in everything you do."

 ~ Seneca, Letters, 89.14

Stoic Week 2017, Monday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017 - Evening Text For Reflection

"Never value as beneficial to yourself something which will force you one day to break your word,
abandon your sense of shame, hate, suspect, or curse someone else, pretend, or desire something
that needs the secrecy of walls or curtains. The one who has chosen to value above all his own
mind and guardian-spirit and the worship of his mind’s virtue does not make a drama of his life or
complain and will not need either isolation or crowds of people; most of all, he will live neither
pursuing nor avoiding things. He does not care in any way whether he will have his soul enclosed
by his body for a longer or shorter time; even if he needs to leave right away, he goes away as
readily as if he were performing any of the other actions that can be done in a decent and orderly
way, exercising care for this alone throughout his life, that his mind should never be in a state
which is alien to that of a rational and social being."

 ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.7

Stoic Week 2017, Monday Morning

Stoic Week 2017 - Self-Renewal: A Journey Into Stoicism

"At every hour, give your full concentration... to carrying out the task in hand with a scrupulous and
unaffected dignity and affectionate concern for others and freedom and justice, and give yourself space from other concerns... You see how few things you need to be able to live a smoothly flowing life."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.5


Monday Morning Text For Reflection:


"People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. But this is
altogether un-philosophical, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself at any time you want. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind, especially if he has within himself the kind of thoughts that let him dip into them and so at once gain complete ease of mind; and by ease of mind, I mean nothing but having one’s own mind in good order. So constantly give yourself this retreat and renew yourself. You should have to hand concise and fundamental principles, which will be enough, as soon as you encounter them, to cleanse you from all distress and send you back without resentment at the activities to
which you return."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3

October 16th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Spread The Word

"Some people with exceptional minds quickly grasp virtue, or produce it within themselves. But other dim and lazy types, hindered by bad habits, must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed down . . . The weaker sorts will be helped and lifted from their bad opinions if we put them in the care of philosophy's principles."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 95.36-37

October 15th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Give People the Benefit of the Doubt

"Everything turns on your assumptions about it, and that's on you. You can pluck out the hasty judgment at will, and like steering a ship around a point, you will find calm seas, fair weather, and a safe port."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.22

October 14th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Don't Get Mad, Help

"Are you angry when someone's armpits stink or when their breath is bad? What would be the point? Having such a mouth and such armpits, there's going to be a smell emanating. You say, they must have sense, can't they tell how they are offending others? Well, you have sense too, congratulations! So, use your natural reason to awaken theirs, show them, call it out. If the person will listen, you will have cured them without useless anger. No drama nor unseemly show required."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.28

October 13th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Revenge Is A Dish Best Not Served

"The best way to avenge yourself is to not be like that."
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.6

"How much better to heal than to seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or to bite a dog?"
~ Seneca, On Anger, 3.27.2

October 12th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Always Love

"Hecato says, 'I can teach you a love potion made without any drugs, herbs, or special spell - if you would be loved, love.'"

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 9.6

October 11th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Honesty As Our Default

"How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to 'give it to you straight.' What are you up to, dear friend? It shouldn't need your announcement, but be readily seen, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes - just as the beloved sees it all in the lover's glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat - you know when they are in the room with you!"

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.15

October 10th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Reverence and Justice

"Leave the past behind, let the grand design take care of the future, and instead only rightly guide the present to reverence and justice. Reverence so that you'll love what you've been allotted, for nature brought you to each other. Justice so that you'll speak the truth freely and without evasion, and so that you'll act only as the law and value of things require."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.1

October 9th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Set the Standards and Use Them

"When the standards have been set, things are tested and weighed. And the work of philosophy is just this, to examine and uphold the standards, but the work of the truly good person is in using those standards when they know them."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.11.23-25

October 8th Reading from The Daily Stoic - A Higher Pleasure

"Yes, getting your wish would have been so nice. But isn't that exactly why pleasure trips us up? Instead, see if these things might be even nicer - a great soul, freedom, honesty, kindness, saintliness. For there is nothing so pleasing as wisdom itself, when you consider how sure-footed and effortless the works of understanding and knowledge are."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.9

October 7th Reading from The Daily Stoic - A Selfish Reason To Be Good

"The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves. The unjust person is unjust to themselves - making themselves evil."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.4

October 6th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Looking Our for Each Other

"It's in keeping with Nature to show our friends affection and to celebrate their advancement, as if it were our very own. For if we don't do this, virtue, which is strengthened only by our exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 109.15

October 5th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Words Can't Be Unsaid

"Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue."

~ Zeno, quoted in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.26

October 4th Reading from The Daily Stoic - All For One, One For All

"That which isn't good for the hive, isn't good for the bee."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.54

October 3rd Reading from The Daily Stoic - A Mantra of Mutual Interdependence

"Meditate often upon the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. For in a sense, all things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other - for one thing follows after another according to their tension of movement, their sympathetic stirrings, and the unity of all substance."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.38

October 2nd Reading from The Daily Stoic - The Most Valuable Asset

"But the wise person can lose nothing. Such a person has everything stored up for themselves, leaving nothing to Fortune, their own goods are held firm, bound in virtue, which requires nothing from chance, and therefore can't be either increased or diminished."

~ Seneca, On the Firmness of the Wise, 5.4

Note that Seneca's point is that the wise person - the sage - knows that nothing is truly theirs except their own moral choice. Therefore, they can lose nothing. Lost their home, their money, their wife, their children, their position? No, they lost nothing that was theirs. Nothing can take from you your own moral choice, which is the only thing you truly own.

October 1st Reading from The Daily Stoic - Let Virtue Shine Bright

"Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn't your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?"

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.15