Category: Stoicism
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Your Occasional Stoic — To Dread a Work of Nature is a Childish Thing
It is within our rational power to understand how swiftly all things vanish; how the corporeal forms are swallowed up in the material world, and the memory of them in the tide of ages. Such are all the things of sense, especially those which ensnare us with pleasure or terrify us with pain, or those…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Think of Death
Do every deed, speak every word, think every thought in the knowledge that you may end your days any moment. To depart from men, if there be really Gods, is nothing terrible. The Gods could bring no evil thing upon you. And if there be no Gods, or if they have no regard to human…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Crime of Pleasure, Crimes of Passion
In comparing crimes together, as, according to the common idea, they may be compared, Theophrastus makes the true philosophical distinction — that those committed from motives of pleasure are more heinous than those which are due to passion. For he who is a prey to passion is clearly turned away from reason by some spasm…
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Your Occasional Stoic –No One Can Stop You
Remember always what the nature of the Universe is, what your own nature is, and how these are related. Remember what part your qualities are of the qualities of the whole, and that no one can prevent you from speaking and acting always in accordance with your nature. Meditations 2:9 The first part here is…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Those Who Do Not Observe Well the Stirrings of Their Own Souls
Seldom are any found unhappy from not observing what is in the minds of others. But those who do not observe well the stirrings of their own souls must of necessity be unhappy. Meditations 2:8 Worry less about others and more about yourself.
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Your Occasional Stoic — Go On, Go On!
Go on, go on, my soul, to affront and dishonor yourself! The time that remains to honor yourself will not be long. Short is the life of every man; and yours is almost spent; spent, not honoring yourself, but seeking the happiness in the souls of other men. Meditations 2:6 Maybe the best, most succinct…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Unaffected dignity and Kindness
Hourly and earnestly strive, as a Roman and a man, to do what falls to your hand with perfect unaffected dignity, with kindliness, freedom and justice, and free your soul from every other imagination. This you will accomplish if you perform each action as if it were your last, without willfulness, or any passionate aversion…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Those In The Arena Are All That Matter, Those In The Stands Are None Of Our Concern.
Do not waste what remains of life in consideration about others, when it does not help the common good. Be sure you are neglecting other work if you busy yourself with what such a one is doing and why, with what he is saying, thinking, or scheming. Such things do nothing but divert you from…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Everything Dies Baby That’s A Fact
Hippocrates, who had healed many diseases, himself fell sick, and died. The Chaldeans foretold the fatal hours of multitudes, and afterwards fate carried them away. Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar, who so often razed whole cities, and cut off in battle so many myriads of horse and foot, at last departed from this life themselves.…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Contemplate The Fierce Jaws Of Beasts With No Less Delight Than The Works Of Sculptors Or Painters
Observe what grace and charm appear even in the accidents that accompany Nature’s work. Some parts of a loaf crack and burst in the baking; and this cracking, though in a manner contrary to the design of the baker, looks well and invites the appetite. Figs, too, gape when at their ripest, and in ripe…
Milo and the Calf 