Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated) Quotes

“None of these men will bring about your death any time sooner, but rather they will teach you how to die. None of them will shorten your lifespan, but each will add the wisdom of his years to yours. In other words, there is nothing dangerous about talking to these people and it won’t cost you a penny. Take from them as much as you wish. It’s up to you to squeeze the most you can from their wisdom. What bliss, what a glorious old age awaits the man who has offered himself as a mate to these intellects! He will have mentors and colleagues from whom he may seek advice on the smallest of matters, companions ever ready with counsel for his daily life, from whom he may hear truth without judgment, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself. They say ‘you can’t choose your parents,’ that they have been given to us by chance; but the good news is we can choose to be the sons of whomever we desire. There are many respectable fathers scattered across the centuries to choose from. Select a genius and make yourself their adopted son. You could even inherit their name and make claim to be a true descendant and then go forth and share this wealth of knowledge with others. These men will show you the way to immortality, and raise you to heights from which no man can be cast down. This is the only way to extend mortality – truly, by transforming time into immortality. Honors, statues and all other mighty monuments to man’s ambition carved in stone will crumble but the wisdom of the past is indestructible. Age cannot wither nor destroy philosophy which serves all generations. Its vitality is strengthened by each new generation’s contribution to it. The Philosopher alone is unfettered by the confines of humanity. He lives forever, like a god. He embraces memory, utilizes the present and anticipates with relish what is to come. He makes his time on Earth longer by merging past, present and future into one.”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“A so-called busy man may declare the day to be endless, or may mourn how the hours crawl slowly toward dinner time, but this is no evidence that this man’s life is long. For when the busy man finally has some time to himself he’s left to stew in boundless boredom with nothing to do and with no clue how to fill his day. Restlessly these types seek new ways to be at leisure and the time between play needles them to no end. Their excitement peaks at the announcement of a gladiator bout or some other such spectacle and they long to skip the days that lie between now and the grand day of extravagant entertainment. Their impatient waiting for something they desire gives them the illusion that time is passing by slowly. Yet their days on Earth remain finite, even as they fritter away time bobbing from one pleasure to another. For these wasters, uneventful afternoons of no play are long and hateful. Yet a single night out drinking with a harlot seems to fly by in no time! This strange perception of the passage of time depending on one’s mood and company has provided material for the poets. We have heard tales of how when Jupiter was with a lover the night he spent in her pleasant company seemed to pass twice as long. But doesn’t using the story concerning a god as an example of how to make time pass longer merely encourage more human vice? Can a night that costs a man so much really be regretted by that same man for being so short? They waste the day in anticipation of the night, then spend the night worrying about the coming dawn.”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“How can you think that anything will not happen, when you know that it may happen to many men, and has happened to many? That is a noble verse, and worthy of a nobler source than the stage:— "What one hath suffered may befall us all." That man has lost his children: you may lose yours. That man has been convicted: your innocence is in peril. We are deceived and weakened by this delusion, when we suffer what we never foresaw that we possibly could suffer: but by looking forward to the coming of our sorrows we take the sting out of them when they come.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“He who restrains himself within the limits prescribed by nature, will not feel poverty; he who exceeds them will always be poor, however great his wealth may be.”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“Thus the time we are given is not brief, but we make it so. We do not lack time; on the contrary, there is so much of it that we waste an awful lot.”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“Nature permits us respite only when we are free from the desires of the flesh. It is a truth that sustains us and is a serious principle at the heart of all existence. It lifts our life beyond the confines of earthly concerns and exalts our natures to the stars. Is this not a miracle?”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“The busy man remains rooted to the ground, ever stuck in the present, a time so brief that it cannot be grasped, and thus it is stolen from him, busy as he is with so many things.”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“Why need we weep over parts of our life? the whole of it calls for tears: new miseries assail us before we have freed ourselves from the old ones.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“We ought frequently to remind ourselves that we must love the things of this life as we would what is shortly to leave us, or indeed in the very act of leaving us.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“we never expect that any evil will befall ourselves before it comes, we will not be taught by seeing the misfortunes of others that they are the common inheritance of all men, but imagine that the path which we have begun to tread is free from them and less beset by dangers than that of other people. How many funerals pass our houses? Yet we do not think of death.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“Poverty, grief, and ambition, are felt differently by different people, according as they are influenced by habit: a rooted prejudice about the terrors of these things, though they are not really to be feared, makes a man weak and unable to endure them.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“Plague on it! what madness this is, to punish one's self because one is unfortunate, and not to lessen, but to increase one's ills!”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“All vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More

“No one is despised by others unless he be previously despised by himself: a groveling and abject mind may fall an easy prey to such contempt: but he who stands up against the most cruel misfortunes, and overcomes those evils by which others would have been crushed—such a man, I say, turns his misfortunes into badges of honour, because we are so constituted as to admire nothing so much as a man who bears adversity bravely.”
― Seneca, Stoic Six Pack 2 (Illustrated): Consolations From A Stoic, On The Shortness of Life and More