Category: Stoicism
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Your Occasional Stoic — Have a Sense of Urgency … Because Understanding and Intelligence Often Leave Us Before We Die
Man must consider, not only that each day part of his life is spent, and that less and less remains to him, but also that, even if he were to live longer, it is very uncertain whether his intelligence will suffice as it has for the understanding his affairs, and for grasping that knowledge which…
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Your Occasional Stoic — The Duration of Man’s Life Is But An Instant
The duration of man’s life is but an instant; his substance is fleeting, his senses dull; the structure of his body corruptible; the soul but a vortex. We cannot reckon with fortune, or lay our account with fame. To put is shortly, the life of the body is but a river, and the life of…
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Your Occasional Stoic: “Beyond Thinking There Is Nothing”
“‘Beyond thinking there is nothing’. The objections to this saying of Monimus the Cynic are obvious. But obvious also is the utility of what he said, if one accept the kernel of what he is saying as truth will warrant it.’ Meditations 2:15 Monimus was a slave, who tricked his master into thinking he…
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Your Occasional Stoic: Conquered by Pleasure or Pain
Man’s soul harms itself, firstly and chiefly when it does all it can to become a seperate growth, a sort of tumor on the Universe. To resent any particular event is to revolt against the general law of Nature, which comprehends the order of all events whatsoever. It also dishonors the soul when it has…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Do Not Mourn An Unknown Future; Do Not Fear Death
Even if you are going to live three thousand years, or as many times ten thousand years, remember that no man loses any other life than the one which he now lives, or lives any other life than the one he now loses. The longest and shortest are then to the same. For the present…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Only Children Fear Death
How quickly all things disappear, our bodies lost, in time even the memory of them will disappear, what is the nature of the things we experience, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain? How worthless, contemptible, sordid, perishable, and dead they are — all this is part…
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Your Occasional Stoic — You May Die Today
It is possible you may die today. Regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to die, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve you in evil. But if indeed the gods do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what…
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Your Occasional Stoic: A Hierarchy of Bad Acts
Theophrastus, in his comparison of bad acts says ones committed out of desire are worse than those which are committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be…
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Your Occasional Stoic: True to My Nature
Keep this in mind — what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what relation it is, and of what kind, to the whole; and that there is no one who hinders me from always doing and saying the things which are according…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Knowledge of Self
Not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy. -Meditation 2:8 Others are unknowable, you know this. It should not sadden you. But not knowing yourself? That’s a problem. Like many of…
Milo and the Calf 