A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William B. Irvine

the goal of the Stoics was not to banish emotion from life but to banish negative emotions.

“BEGIN EACH DAY by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”

the best way to gain satisfaction is not by working to satisfy whatever desires we find within us but by learning to be satisfied with our life as it is—by learning to be happy with whatever we’ve got.

Marcus recommends that when we interact with an annoying person, we keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying.

By engaging in retrospective negative visualization, Seneca thinks, we can replace our feelings of regret at having lost something with feelings of thanks for once having had it.

when the Stoics teach us not to fear death, they are simply giving us advice on how to avoid a negative emotion.

When the Stoics live each day as if it were their last, it is not because they plan to take steps to make that day their last; rather, it is so they can extract the full value of that day

The most important reason for adopting a philosophy of life, though, is that if we lack one, there is a danger that we will mislive—that we will spend our life pursuing goals that aren’t worth attaining or will pursue worthwhile goals in a foolish manner and will therefore fail to attain them.

We should imagine ourselves losing the things we most value, including possessions and loved ones. We should also imagine the loss of our own life.

If we do this, we will come to appreciate the things we now have, and because we appreciate them, we will be less likely to form desires for other things.