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