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