Stoic Meditations

When someone is wandering about our city because they have lost their way, it is better to place then on the right path than to drive them away. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca responds somewhat sarcastically to the Aristotelian suggestion that a bit of anger is good because it makes soldiers more willing to fight. So does being drunk, but no general would want a drunken army. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Defenders of the right to be angry say that we should be angered by injustice. But why is it that positive emotions, like love, concern for others, and a well developed sense of justice, aren't enough? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it: for if once it begins to carry us away, it is hard to get back again into a healthy condition. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Anger is very like a falling rock which breaks itself to pieces upon the very thing which it crushes. That you may know that they whom anger possesses are not sane, look at their appearance. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Stoics have no problem with wealth. We are not Cynics, after all. So long as it is not ill-gotten, or ill-used, it represents yet another preferred indifferent, yet another occasion to exercise virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

An eye, when open, has no option but to see. The decision whether to look at a particular man’s wife, however, and how, belongs to the will. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

To have lived 60 years, or 70, or 100 is an interesting factoid, but the real question is: have you lived well? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Unless you believe in miracles, you agree that events are regulated by cause and effect. In which case the notion that someone dies "too soon" is highly problematic. Not just metaphysically, but for your own mental well being. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Life is short, and we should thread lightly, mindful of the fact that it is up to us to leave the place in good conditions, so that the next travelers will enjoy it as much as we did. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If sickness had carried off that glory and support of the empire Gnaeus Pompeius, at Naples, he would have died the undoubted head of the Roman people, but as it was, a short extension of time cast him down from his pinnacle of fame. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If anyone pities the dead, he ought also to pity those who have not been born. Death is neither a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a good or a bad thing. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

He who dies need fear no darkness, no prison, no blazing streams of fire, no river of Lethe, no judgment seat before which he must appear, and that Death is such utter freedom that he need fear no more despots. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Whenever we decide to do something, we enter in a bargain with the cosmic web of cause-effect. The decision and effort is up to us, the outcome not so. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Every time we lose a loved one it means that we have, in fact, loved. So we should not be resentful for what the universe has taken, but rather thankful for what it has given. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Believe me -- says Seneca to Marcia -- [women] have the same intellectual power as men, and the same capacity for honorable and generous action. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds his friend Marcia, who had lost a son a couple of years later, that it is better to be thankful for what she had, rather than resentful for what she has lost. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Everything we think we have is actually on loan from the universe, so to speak, and we need to be ready to give it back whenever the universe recalls the loan, no matter in what form it does it. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

One way to prepare for setbacks in life is to pay attention when they happen to others. We are not exceptions to the fabric of the universe, we are an integral part of it. What happens to others may or will happen to us. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Feeling grief and sorrow at the loss of a loved one is natural and inevitable. Dwelling on it to the point of becoming paralyzed and not being able to resume an active role in society is something we need to avoid. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support