How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life

by Massimo Pigliucci

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

if you kiss your child, or brother, or friend… you must remind yourself that you love a mortal, and that nothing that you love is your very own; it is given you for the moment, not for ever nor inseparably, but like a fig or a bunch of grapes at the appointed season of the year, and if you long for it in winter you are a fool.

Intelligent stupidity “is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself.” The danger lies “not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, [and] any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings.”

Life only happens once, and we learn “in the air,” not in a safe environment.

I must die, must I? If at once, then I am dying: if soon, I dine now, as it is time for dinner, and afterwards when the time comes I will die. —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, I.1