The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

Space.

likewise

indeed,

we satisfy the

See that you don’t do that again; I’ll pardon you this time. In that discussion you spoke too aggressively. After this, don’t get into arguments with ignorant people. If they’ve never learned, they don’t want to learn. You criticized that one fellow more candidly than you should have; as a result you didn’t correct him, you just offended him. From here on, watch out – not so much that what you’re saying is true, but that the person you’re talking to can stand the truth.

today I will meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, and the arrogant; with the deceitful, the envious, and the unsocial. All these things result from their not knowing what is good and what is evil. But I have seen the nature of the good – that it is beautiful; and the nature of evil,

one can involve me in anything ugly except myself.

You take yourself along. Your mental burden must be put down before any place will satisfy you.

My giant goes with me wherever I go. Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)

“I am conversing with myself,” he said. To which Crates replied, “Watch out, I beg of you, and listen carefully: you are conversing with a bad man.”…

himself.

should make such maxims and not memorize them.

showing that nothing is difficult if the mind orders itself to endure it.

Learning how to live takes a lifetime, and – what may surprise you more

– it takes a lifetime to learn how to die. Seneca, On the Shortness of

did not seem easier in the doing? Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty. The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.

The combat is great, the achievement divine; for empire, for freedom, for happiness, for peace.

Our judgments, and our reactions to events,