Stoic Meditations

Wealth ought to be despised, not that we should not possess it, but that we should not possess it with fear and trembling: we do not drive it away from us, but when it leaves us, we follow after it unconcernedly. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca gives us a handy list of fundamental goals to live a life worth living. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Diodorus has said what you do not like to hear, because you too ought to do it. “I’ve lived, I’ve run the race which Fortune set me.” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

I shall continue to praise that life which I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I ought to lead, loving virtue and following after her, albeit a long way behind her and with halting gait. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

I am not a wise man, so do not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely to be better than the worst: I am satisfied, if every day I take away something from my vices and correct my faults. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Why, then, do you talk so much more bravely than you live? Why do you pay regard to common rumor, and feel annoyed by calumnious gossip? Why do you drink wine that is older than yourself? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Let virtue lead the way and bear the standard: we shall have pleasure for all that, but we shall be her masters and controllers; she may win some concessions from us, but will not force us to do anything. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca strikes a sympathetic note toward Epicureanism, suggesting that it is a misunderstood philosophy, just like, in some respects, modern Stoicism turns out to be. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

You devote yourself to pleasures, I check them; you indulge in pleasure, I use it; you think that it is the highest good, I do not even think it to be good: for the sake of pleasure I do nothing, you do everything. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Does this not appear great enough, when I tell you that the highest good is an unyielding strength of mind, wisdom, magnanimity, sound judgment, freedom, harmony, beauty? Do you still ask me for something greater? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If exercising virtue is pleasurable, aren't the Stoics a kind of Epicureans in disguise? Not at all, because the pleasure of virtue is a byproduct, not the main goal. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

A mind in harmony with itself is a virtuous one, because it is the vices that are at war with each other. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The ancients bade us lead the highest, not the most pleasant life, in order that pleasure might not be the guide but the companion of a right-thinking and honorable mind. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If pleasure and virtue were entirely inseparable, we should not see some things to be pleasant, but not honorable, and others most honorable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

That person is happy, whose reason recommends to them the whole posture of their affairs. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

For no one can be styled happy who is beyond the influence of truth. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

A person may be called “happy” who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear: but rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, yet no one would call those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The highest good is a mind which despises the accidents of fortune, and takes pleasure in virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

A happy life must also set due value upon all the things which adorn our lives, without over-estimating any one of them, and must be able to enjoy the bounty of Fortune without becoming her slave. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

When I say “our opinion,” I do not bind myself to any one of the chiefs of the Stoic school, for I too have a right to form my own opinion. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support