October 31st Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - Who Gets The Lion's Share?

 "Aren't you ashamed to reserve for yourself only 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 (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - We Reap What We Sow

 "Crimes often return to their teacher."

~ Seneca, Thyestes, 311

October 26th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Three Parts, One Aim

 "The best and 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 displace truth."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 89.9

October 25th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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

October 22nd Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 more community-minded, or modest, or well-prepared for any circumstance, or more tolerant of the faults of others."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.52 

October 21st Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 past generations didn't praise you."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.18

October 20th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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) 

October 19th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 of our own choice, we should set a contrary habit against that, and where appearances are really slippery, use the counterforce of our training."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.12.6 

October 16th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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 the point, you will find calm seas, fair weather, and a safe port."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.22

October 14th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 Readings from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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 both 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 (Round 2) - 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 determine and uphold the standards, but the work of a 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 (Round 2) - 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 (Round 2) - 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, Mediations, 9.4

October 6th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Looking Out 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 exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 109.15

October 5th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Words Can't Be Unsaid

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

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

October 4th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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 2nd Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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

October 1st Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - 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