SR13 · Module
Situational Stoic Maxims
Classical Stoic maxims from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius organised around acute states: facing adversity, overcoming overwhelm and procrastination, governing grievance and anger, preparing the mind at daybreak, and rousing oneself to duty.
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“Excellence withers without an adversary. It is not what you endure that matters, but how you endure it.”
“For sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you.”
“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
“As you move forward along the path of reason, people will stand in your way. They will never be able to keep you from doing what’s sound, so don’t let them knock out your goodwill for them. Keep a steady watch on both fronts, not only for well-based judgments and actions, but also for gentleness with those who would obstruct our path or create other difficulties. For getting angry is also a weakness, just as much as abandoning the task or surrendering under panic.”
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?”
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
“Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.”
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”
“You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed and do not cease where you had intended.”
“That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.”
QuoteDeliberate effort and plateausProcrastination and delaying action2 more related links
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“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own ...”
“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.”
“Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.”
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own; not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.”
“Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running ... therefore, if you want to do something make a habit of it, if you don’t want to do that, don’t, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you’ve not only experienced that evil, but you’ve also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire.”
“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”