Category: Stoicism
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Your Occasional Stoic — Be curious, but not reactive.
Does the external distract you? Give yourself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around. But then you must also avoid being carried about the other way. For those too are triflers who have tired themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to which to direct every…
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Your Occasional Stoic: Who decides your worth?
Go head, keep doing wrong to yourself, my soul; but soon you will no longer have the opportunity of honoring yourself. Every man’s life is sufficient. But yours is nearly finished, and instead of respecting yourself, you place you happiness in the souls of others. -Meditation, 2.6 As with many of the mediations (and with…
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Your Occasional Stoic: Live Every Moment in Duty
Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what you have in hand with perfect and simple dignity, feeling of affection, freedom, and justice. Give yourself relief from all other thoughts and you will give yourself relief. If you do every act of life as if it were the last, laying…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Clear the Mind, Time is Running Out
Remember how long you have put off these things. Remember how often you have received an opportunity from the gods, and not used it. You must now at last perceive of what universe you are a part, what power rules you, and that a limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do…
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Your Occasional Stoic – Cast Away Your Thirst for Knowledge
All that is from the gods is full of Providence. That which is from fortune is not separated from nature or without an interweaving and involution with the things which are ordered by Providence. From this all things flow; and there is besides necessity, and that which is for the advantage of the whole universe,…
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Your Occasional Stoic – Greeting the Morning
Begin the morning by saying “I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is…
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Your Occasional Stoic: Poetry, but not a poet
To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried into any offence against any of them, though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered,…
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Your Occasional Stoic – From the Father: Integrity, Hard Work, Modesty
In my father I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation. No vainglory in those things which men call honors. A love of labor and perseverance. A readiness to listen to those who had anything to propose for the common weal. An undeviating firmness in…
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Your Occasional Stoic: The Private over the Public
From my Great-Grandfather To avoid the public schools, to hire good private teachers, and to accept the resulting costs as money well-spent. Mediations, 1:4 Marcus great-grandfather (or really step great-grandfather) was Lucius Catilius Severus, roman consul. There much to admire in the mediation, but lets not forget they’re the work of a king. Of a…
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Your Occasional Stoic: Self-Control and Resistance to Distractions
For Maximus: Self-control and resistance to distractions. Optimism in adversity – especially illness A personality in balance: dignity and grace together Doing your job without whining. Other people’s certainty that what he said was what he thought, and what he did was done without malice. Never taken aback or apprehensive. Neither rash nor hesitant –…
Milo and the Calf 