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But plans, as the boxer Mike Tyson pointed out, last only until you’re punched in the face.
Vivere est militare. (To live is to fight.)
“the best treasure is a sparing tongue.”
“Don’t be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can’t climb up without another soldier’s help?”
Well, you are still loved. You can ask anyone for help. You don’t have to face everything on your own. If you need help, comrade, just ask.
“Philosophy,” he says, helps us tame the “mad frenzy of our greed and tamps down the fury of our fears.”
Like us, they’re better off putting one foot in front of the other and considering everything else to be extraneous.
If the men begin to lose their wits, if the group is unsure of what to do next, it’s the leader’s job to do one thing: instill calm—not by force but by example.
Hope is not a strategy! Failure is a part of life we have little choice over.
He was much more interested in hearing what the other person had to say than making sure he was heard or—as most of us insist upon—winning the argument.
No need to be too hard on yourself. Hold yourself to a higher standard but not an impossible one. And forgive yourself if and when you slip up.
The most critical part of this system was the belief that you, the student who has sought out Stoicism, have the most important job: to be good! To be wise. “To remain the person that philosophy wished to make us.”
“The task of a philosopher: we should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.”
“This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus—how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends.”
They don’t have to do it. They’re free, and they choose this.
Whatever humble art you practice: Are you sure you’re making time for it? Are you loving what you do enough to make the time? Can you trust that if you put in the effort, the rest will take care of itself? Because it will. Love the craft, be a craftsman.
As we mature, we start to see them in a different light. We understand that stepping up and helping is a service that leaders provide to the world. It’s our duty to do this—in big situations and small ones. If we expect to be leaders, we must see that thankless service comes with the job. We must do what leaders do, because it’s what leaders do—not for the credit, not for the thanks, not for the recognition. It’s our duty.
“Every great power is dangerous for the beginner. You must therefore wield them as you are able, but in harmony with nature.”
To what are you committed? What cause, what mission, what purpose?
The foundation of a free country is that your freedom to swing your fist ends where someone else’s nose begins.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So if you need an extra boost to get out of bed this morning, if you need something more than caffeine can offer, use this. People are depending on you. Your purpose is to help us render this great work together. And we’re waiting and excited for you to show up.
The record shows that Cato’s reaction was basically nothing. He responded to the honor and the dishonor the same way: with indifference and acceptance.
The ability to work hard and long is admirable. But you are a human being, not a human doing.
“Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”
It’s that old line: all evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
It’s not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can.
What is “a cure for the self”?
The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful.
That’s Stoic joy—the joy that comes from purpose, excellence, and duty. It’s a serious thing—far more serious than a smile or a chipper voice.
“That cucumber is bitter, so toss it out! There are thorns on the path, then keep away! Enough said. Why ponder the existence of nuisance?
“All right! I can work that way too!”
He was what we admire in a profession we believe to be filled exclusively with the opposite of that type of person.
The idea is not to settle or compromise your standards, but rather not to become trapped by idealism.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
there is no certain good without virtue; and virtue resides in our nobler part, which is the rational one. And what can this virtue be? True and steadfast judgment.
“You can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus has the power to break my freedom of choice.”
Your hidden power is your ability to use reason and make choices, however limited or small.
“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
“It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress. . . . If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.”
“Success comes to the lowly and to the poorly talented, but the special characteristic of a great person is to triumph over the disasters and panics of human life.”
pain is never unbearable or unending, so you can remember these limits and not add to them in your imagination.
Epicurus says, nothing is unending. You just need to be strong and gracious enough to get through it.
The point is not to have an iron will, but an adaptable will—a will that makes full use of reason to clarify perception, impulse, and judgment to act effectively for the right purpose.
It’s not weak to change and adapt. Flexibility is its own kind of strength. In fact, this flexibility combined with strength is what will make us resilient and unstoppable.
For is there anything in life that Fortune won’t knock off its high horse if it pleases her?”
“Leisure without study is death—a tomb for the living person.”
Maybe your goal is to make enough money so that you can retire early. Good for you! But the purpose of retirement is not to live a life of indolence or to run out the clock, as easy as that might be to do. Rather, it’s to allow for the pursuit of your real calling now that a big distraction is out of the way. To sit around all day and do nothing? To watch endless amounts of television or simply travel from place to place so that you might cross locations off a checklist? That is not life. It’s not freedom either.
“power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals.”
“Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn’t your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?”
