The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

HAMLET: … There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

No good man grieves or groans, no one wails, no one turns pale and trembles and says, “How will he receive me, how will he listen to me?” Slave, he will act as he sees fit. Why do you care about other people’s business?

Conversely, we will be able to perceive evil, and the sluggishness of a wretched mind, however much the view may be blocked by gleaming riches, or however strongly a false light – here of rank and position, there of great power – beats down on the beholder.

Some would regard Marcus Aurelius as a notably poor motivational speaker. For the Stoic he is among the only kind tolerable.

what death is like is unknown to anyone, but it appears to be a painless state that leaves us no worse off than we were before we were born.

a continuous process rather than a sudden one: we die every day as our time on earth passes behind

You are going to die at any minute, and yet you still are not simple and straightforward, nor do you have peace of mind, nor are you free from suspicion that you will be hurt by external things, nor are you kind to everyone, nor do you see that being wise consists solely in being just.

Let us order our minds as if we had come to the end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day.

You will learn the truth by experience: the things that people value highly and try hardest to get do them no good once they have them. Those who don’t have them imagine that, once they do, everything good will be theirs; then they do get them, and the heat of their desires is the same, their agitation is the same, their disgust with what they possess is the same, and their wish for what they don’t have is the same. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.174