Category: Stoicism
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Your Occasional Stoic: Marcus and the Perfect Mentors
From Maximus: self-mastery, immune to any passing whim; good cheer in all circumstances, including illness; a nice balance of character, both gentle and dignified; an uncomplaining energy for what needs to be done; the trust he inspired in everyone that he meant what he said and was well-intentioned in all that he did; proof against…
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Your Occasional Stoic: The Emperor and the Martyrs of the Republic
From Serverus: to love my family, truth and justice. It was through him that I encountered Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion and Brutus, and conceived of a society of equal laws, governed by equality of status and of speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. And from him as…
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Your Occasional Stoic – Friends, Teachers, Children
From Catulus: not to spurn a friend’s criticism, even if it may be unreasonable complaint, but to try to restore his usual feelings; to speak of one’s teachers with wholehearted gratitude, as is recorded of Domitius and Athenodotus; and a genuine love from children. -Meditations, 1.13 My notes tell me* that the Catulus who Marcus…
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Your Occasional Stoic – we’re always “too busy”
From Alexander the Platonist: rarely, and never without essential cause, to say or write to anyone that ‘I am too busy’; nor to use a similar excuse, advancing ‘pressure of circumstances’ in constant avoidance of the proprieties inherent in our relations to our fellows and contemporaries – Aurelius, Meditations, 1:12 Alexander the Platonist was for…
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Your Occasional Stoic : Caprice in Absolute Rule
An occasional series of posts quoting the great works of stoicism with some short notes from me. From Fronto: to understand the effect of suspicion, caprice, and hypocrisy in the exercise of absolute rule; and that for the most part these people we call ‘Patricians’ are somewhat short of human affection. Aurelius, Meditations, 1:11 Fronto…
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Your Occasional Stoic – Manners Make the Man
An occasional series of posts quoting the great works of stoicism with some short notes from me. From Alexander the grammarian: not to leap on mistakes, or captiously interrupt when anyone makes an error of vocabulary, syntax, or pronunciation, but neatly to introduce the correct form of that particular expression by way of answer, confirmation,…
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Your Occasional Stoic – Wearing Learning Lightly
From Sextus: A kindly disposition, and the pattern of a household governed by the paterfamilias; the concept of life lived according to nature; an unaffected dignity; intuitive concern for his friends; tolerance both of ordinary people and of the emptily opinionated; an agreeable manner with all, so that the pleasure of his conversation was greater…
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Your Occasional Stoic – The Same Man
From Apollonius: moral freedom, the certainty to ignore the dice of fortune, and have no other perspective, even for a moment, than that of reason alone; to be always the same man, unchanged in sudden pain, in the loss of a child, in lingering sickness; to see clearly in his living example that a man…
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Your Occasional Stoic Avoiding the Taste for Rhetoric
From Rusticus: to grasp the idea of wanting correction and treatment for my character; not to be diverted into a taste for rhetoric, so not writing up my own speculations, delivering my own little moral sermons, or presenting a glorified picture of the ascetic or the philanthropist; to keep clear of speechifying, versifying, and pretentious…
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Your Occasional Stoic: The Camp Bed, the Hide Blanket
From Diognetus: to avoid empty enthusiasm; to disbelieve all that is talked by miracle-mongers and quacks about incantations, exorcism of demons, and the like; not to hold quail-fights or be excited by such sports; to tolerate plain speaking; to have an affinity for philosophy, and to attend the lectures first of Baccheius, then of Tandasis…
Milo and the Calf 