Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

by Ryan Holiday

It was Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of the Roman era, far removed from the academy, who would say quite bluntly that there was no other purpose to reading and study if not to live a happy life.

Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

Those who live by keeping the individual and universal natures in agreement are happy, Zeno said, and those who don’t are not.

Anything you do well is noble, no matter how humble.

a skilled pilot doesn’t go to a ship’s manual when he’s hit by a wave—no, he uses his deep grounding in the principles of seamanship and his training and experience to make the right call.

All that remains, Aristo would have said, is how we lived our lives, how close we came to virtue in the moments that mattered.

There is sometimes no better way to strengthen your defense than to learn your opponent’s offense,

There is no better definition of a Stoic: to have but not want, to enjoy without needing.

the human being in action is better understood as an archer. We train and practice. We draw back the arrow and aim it to the best of our abilities. But we know full well that despite our training and our aim, many factors outside our control will influence where the arrow hits the target—or if it falls short entirely.

We train until things become second nature. The moment arrives. We commit. We hold up what’s right as our target. We take action. But much happens after that—much of it not remotely up to us. Which is why we know that our true worth doesn’t reside in whether or not we get a bull’s-eye.

Everyone can have a life of meaning and purpose. Everyone can do what they do like a good Stoic.

All things end. Philosophy is there to remind us of that fact and to prepare us for the blows of life.

Posidonius held that the mind seeks wisdom and what is truly good, whereas the lower parts of the soul seek power and the glory of victory (like Pompey), as well as bodily pleasure. Good habits and lifestyle—set in place by the mind—are checks against these irrational parts of the soul.

the good we do in life is easily forgotten, but the evil we do lives on and on.

We fight fire with fire and end up burning ourselves. Nobody remembers who started it and our scars stay forever, if we even manage to survive the conflagration.

When we are angry, it’s almost always better to wait and do nothing.

“If you have a garden and a library,” Cicero would write in a letter to a friend as they discussed Chrysippus and Diodotus, “you have everything you need.”

nothing racks the nerves quite like the moments, as Shakespeare would say, between decision and action.

The Stoics would have never argued that life was fair or that losing someone didn’t hurt. But they believed that to despair, to tear ourselves apart in bereavement, was not only an affront to the memory of the person we loved, but a betrayal of the living who still needed us.

Wisdom is the knowledge of what things must be done and what must not be done and what is neither, or appropriate acts

Self-control is the knowledge of what things are worth choosing and what are worth avoiding and what is neither.

“Only speak the truth, but only to those who can handle it.”

we’re going to suffer, ought we not suffer in a way that gets us somewhere worth going?

Epictetus believed that as powerless as humans were over their external conditions, they always retained the ability to choose how they responded.

Our opinions determine the reality we experience.

“If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.”

Persist and resist. The ingredients of freedom, whatever one’s condition.

Reservations are not the same thing as cowardice.

“Do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“Waste no more time talking about what a good man is like. Be one.”

“Why should we feel anger at the world,” he writes in Meditations, cribbing a line from a lost Euripides play, “as if the world would notice.”

“Think of yourself as dead,” he writes. “You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

Jackie Robinson would express the idea even more succinctly. “A life is not important,” his tombstone reads, “except in the impact it has on other lives.”

Epictetus wrote, “Is it possible to be free from error? Not by any means, but it is possible to be a person stretching to avoid error.”