November 10th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Always The Same

"Think by way of example on the times of Vespasian, and you'll see all these things: marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming, flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die, grumbling over one's own lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone . . . the times of Trajan, again the same . . ."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.32

November 9th Reading from The Daily Stoic - All Is Fluid

"The universe is change. Life is opinion."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3.4b

November 8th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Actors In A Play

"Remember that you are an actor in a play, playing a character according to the will of the playwright - if a short play, then it's short; if long, long. If he wishes you to play the beggar, play even that role well, just as you would if it were a cripple, a honcho, or an everyday person. For this is your duty, to perform well the character assigned to you. That selection belongs to another."

~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 17

November 7th Reading from The Daily Stoic - How To Be Powerful

"Don't trust in your reputation, money, or position, but in the strength that is yours - namely, your judgments about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and powerful."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.26.34-35

November 6th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Someone Else Is Spinning The Thread

"If the breaking of the day sees someone proud,
 The ending day seems them brought low.
 No one should put too much trust in triumph,
 No one should give up hope of trials improving.
 Clotho mixes one with the other and stops
 Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around.
 No one has had so much divine favor
 That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow.
 God keeps our lives hurtling on,
 Spinning in a whirlwind."

~ Seneca, Thyestes, 613

November 5th Reading from The Daily Stoic - A Higher Power

"This is the very thing that makes up the virtue of the happy person and a well-flowing life - when the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe."

~ Chrysippus, quoted in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.88

November 4th Reading from The Daily Stoic - Not Good, Nor Bad

"There is no evil in things changing, just as there is no good in persisting in a new state."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.42