Tag: marcus aurelius
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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 – Throw Away Your Books; Despise Your Flesh
Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away your books — no longer distract yourself: it is not allowed. As if you’re now dying, despise the flesh. It is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the…
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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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Review: Aurelius’s Meditations
Meditations: A New Translation Marcus Aurelius (trans. Hays) This is most people’s introductions to the philosophy of Stoicism — it was certainly mine. This is* the private writings of the emperor Aurelius, written in Greek, and intended as, perhaps, a set of private exhortations to himself to be better. It is comprised of a series…
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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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100 Days of Milo: Day 18 — Your Occasional Stoic
While I’m interested in the classical world in general, I’m really interested in a few specific sections of it: Hellenized Judaism, the birth of Christianity, and stoicism. Though it may be a, I find great comfort in stoic philosophy and from time to time I annotate quotes from the great stoic works for fun. You can see…
Milo and the Calf 