When faced with anything painful or pleasurable, anything bringing glory or disrepute, realize that the crisis is now, that the Olympics have started, and waiting is no longer an option; that the chance for progress, to keep or lose, turns on the events of a single day. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If I admire the interpretation [of a philosophical treatise], I have turned into a literary critic instead of a philosopher, the only difference being that, instead of Homer, I’m interpreting Chrysippus. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Someone bathes in haste; don’t say he bathes badly, but in haste. Someone drinks a lot of wine; don’t say he drinks badly, but a lot. Until you know their reasons, how do you know that their actions are vicious? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The following are non-sequiturs: ‘I am richer, therefore superior to you’; or ‘I am a better speaker, therefore a better person, than you.’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold on the affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be borne, but rather by the opposite — that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it as it is to be borne. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whenever anyone criticizes or wrongs you, remember that they are only doing or saying what they think is right. They cannot be guided by your views, only their own; so if their views are wrong, they are the ones who suffer insofar as they are misguided. I mean, if someone declares a true conjunctive proposition to be false, the proposition is unaffected, it is they who come off worse for having their ignorance exposed. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

As you are careful when you walk not to step on a nail or turn your ankle, so you should take care not to do any injury to your character at the same time. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When you’re called upon to speak, then speak, but never about banalities like gladiators, horses, sports, food and drink – common-place stuff. Above all don’t gossip about people, praising, blaming or comparing them. Avoid fraternizing with non-philosophers. If you must, though, be careful not to sink to their level; because, you know, if a companion is dirty, his friends cannot help but get a little dirty too, no matter how clean they started out. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When somebody’s wife or child dies, to a man we all routinely say, ‘Well, that’s part of life.’ But if one of our own family is involved, then right away it’s ‘Poor, poor me!’ We would do better to remember how we react when a similar loss afflicts others. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If I can make money while remaining honest, trustworthy and dignified, show me how and I will do it. But if you expect me to sacrifice my own values, just so you can get your hands on things that aren’t even good – well, you can see yourself how thoughtless and unfair you’re being. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. … Take a moment before reacting, and you will find it is easier to maintain control. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When you see anyone weeping for grief, either that his son has gone abroad or that he has suffered in his affairs, take care not to be overcome by the apparent evil, but discriminate and be ready to say, "What hurts this man is not this occurrence itself — for another man might not be hurt by it — but the view he chooses to take of it." As far as conversation goes, however, do not disdain to accommodate yourself to him and, if need be, to groan with him. Take heed, however, not to groan inwardly, too. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You have to realize, it isn’t easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Provoked by the sight of a handsome man or a beautiful woman, you will discover within you the contrary power of self-restraint. Faced with pain, you will discover the power of endurance. If you are insulted, you will discover patience. In time, you will grow to be confident that there is not a single impression that you will not have the moral means to tolerate. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What quality belongs to you? The intelligent use of impressions. If you use impressions as nature prescribes, go ahead and indulge your pride, because then you will be celebrating a quality distinctly your own. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When you’re about to embark on any action, remind yourself what kind of action it is. If you’re going out to take a bath, set before your mind the things that happen at the baths, that people splash you, that people knock up against you, that people steal from you. And you’ll thus undertake the action in a surer manner if you say to yourself at the outset, ‘I want to take a bath and ensure at the same time that my choice remains in harmony with nature.’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that it is a human being that you're kissing; and then, if one of them should die, you won't be upset. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

So make a practice at once of saying to every strong impression: ‘An impression is all you are, not the source of the impression.’ Then test and assess it with your criteria, but one primarily: ask, ‘Is this something that is, or is not, up to me?’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Some things are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not up to us are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Despise poverty; no man lives as poor as he was born: despise pain; either it will cease or you will cease: despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere: despise fortune; I have given her no weapon that can reach the mind. I have taken care that no one should hold you captive against your will: the way of escape lies open before you: if you do not choose to fight, you may fly. For this reason, of all those matters which I have deemed essential for you, I have made nothing easier for you than to die. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I have placed every good thing within your own breasts: it is your good fortune not to need any good fortune. Yet many things befall you which are sad, dreadful, hard to be borne. Well, as I have not been able to remove these from your path, I have given your minds strength to combat all: bear them bravely. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The fates guide us, and the length of every person’s days is decided at the first hour of their birth: every cause depends upon some earlier cause: one long chain of destiny decides all things, public or private. Wherefore, everything must be patiently endured, because events do not fall in our way, as we imagine, but come by a regular law. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

To be always prosperous, and to pass through life without a twinge of mental distress, is to remain ignorant of one half of nature. You are a great human being; but how am I to know it, if fortune gives you no opportunity of showing your virtue? I think you unhappy because you never have been unhappy: you have passed through your life without meeting an antagonist: no one will know your powers, not even you yourself. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Good people ought to act so as not to fear troubles and difficulties, nor to lament their hard fate, to take in good part whatever befalls them, and force it to become a blessing to them. It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of a brave person; for the mind of someone brave maintains its balance and throws its own complexion over all that takes place, because it is more powerful than any external circumstances. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca presents an argument from design to conclude that the universe is rationally and providentially arranged, just like Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and Cicero had done before him, and like Epictetus will do afterwards. Of course, from a modern scientific perspective, such argument does not hold water. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breeze. Sometimes we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We ought therefore to bring ourselves into such a state of mind that all the vices of the vulgar may not appear hateful to us, but merely ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. The latter of these, whenever he appeared in public, used to weep, the former to laugh. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Zeno, the chief of our school, when he heard the news of a shipwreck, in which all his property had been lost, remarked, “Fortune bids me follow philosophy in lighter marching order.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

He who does many things often puts himself in Fortune’s power, and it is safest not to tempt her often, but always to remember her existence, and never to promise oneself anything on her security. I will set sail unless anything happens to prevent me; I shall be praetor, if nothing hinders me; my financial operations will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We must limit the running to and fro which most people practice, rambling about houses, theaters, and marketplaces. They mind other peoples’ business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask them as they come out of their own door, “Whither are you going?” they will answer, “By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do some things.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The next point to these will be to take care that we do not labour for what is vain, or labour in vain: that is to say, neither to desire what we are not able to obtain, nor yet, having obtained our desire too late, and after much toil, to discover the folly of our wishes: in other words, that our labour may not be without result, and that the result may not be unworthy of our labour. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For by looking forward to everything which can happen as though it would happen to us, we take the sting out of all evils, which can make no difference to those who expect it and are prepared to meet it. … Disease, captivity, disaster, conflagration, are none of them unexpected: I always knew with what disorderly company Nature had associated me. … Ought I to be surprised if the dangers which have always been circling around me at last assail me? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

In every station of life you will find amusements, relaxations, and enjoyments; that is, provided you be willing to make light of evils rather than to hate them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What is the use of possessing numberless books and libraries, whose titles their owner can hardly read through in a lifetime? A student is over-whelmed by such a mass, not instructed, and it is much better to devote yourself to a few writers than to skim through many. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Let us accustom ourselves to set aside mere outward show, and to measure things by their uses, not by their ornamental trappings. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The best amount of property to have is that which is enough to keep us from poverty, and which yet is not far removed from it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you compare all the other ills from which we suffer—deaths, sicknesses, fears, regrets, endurance of pains and labors—with those miseries which our money inflicts upon us, the latter will far outweigh all the others. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We should choose for our friends those who are, as far as possible, free from strong desires: for vices are contagious, and pass from someone to their neighbor, and injure those who touch them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No good is done by forcing one’s mind to engage in uncongenial work: it is vain to struggle against Nature. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We ought first to examine our own selves, next the business which we propose to transact, next those for whose sake or in whose company we transact it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We ought therefore, to expand or contract ourselves according as the state of things presents itself to us, or as Fortune offers us opportunities. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The services of a good citizen are never thrown away: he does good by being heard and seen, by his expression, his gestures, his silent determination, and his very walk. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Often a man who is very old in years has nothing beyond his age by which he can prove that he has lived a long time. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca explains that there are many ways to help improve the human cosmopolis: one can be a candidate for public office, a defense lawyer, or a teacher. Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus encouraged involvement in politics, but where themselves teachers. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How long are we to go on doing the same thing? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Hence men undertake aimless wanderings and travel along distant shores, trying to soothe that fickleness of disposition which always is dissatisfied with the present. As Lucretius says: “Thus every mortal from himself does flee.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What you desire, to be undisturbed, is a great thing, nay, the greatest thing of all, and one which raises a man almost to the level of a god. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I will obey the maxims of our school and plunge into public life, not because the purple robe attracts me, but in order that I may be able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all my countrymen, and indeed to all mankind. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca explains that he prefers simple cloths and easily prepared food, not the kind that "goes out of the body by the same path by which it came in." --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero introduces Chrysippus' example of a rolling cylinder as an analogy for the inner workings of the human will. This results in a defense of compatibilism about free will based on distinguishing internal from external causes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains that the Greco-Romans were divided on free will along three possible positions, which turn out to be the very same that still characterize the modern debate on the subject. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero presents Carneades' response to Chrysippus' argument about free will and determinism. Though interesting, this time it is the Skeptics who got it wrong and the Stoics who are on target. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains Chrysippus' theory of co-causality, which plays a crucial role in his rejection of the so-called lazy argument concerning free will. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero summarizes the so-called lazy argument about the nature of faith, explaining why it doesn't make any sense. Fate, according to the Stoics, just is the universal web of causes and effects. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No external cause need be sought to explain the voluntary movements of the mind; for voluntary motion possesses the intrinsic property of being in our power and of obeying us, and its obedience is not uncaused, for its nature is itself the cause of this. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero nails the Epicureans for their ad hoc theory of the so-called swerve, a sudden lateral movement of atoms meant to preserve the notion of free will in an otherwise mechanistic universe. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is the fact that Carneades went to the Academy on a given day the result of necessary causes determined from the beginning of time, or of local causes that could have been otherwise? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For it does not follow that if differences in people’s propensities are due to natural and antecedent causes, therefore our wills and desires are also due to natural and antecedent causes; for if that were the case, we should have no freedom of the will at all. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Because it relates to character, called in Greek ethos, we usually term that part of philosophy ‘the study of character.’ But the suitable course is to add to the Latin language by giving this subject the name of ‘moral science.’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is no proof of a great mind to give and to throw away one’s bounty; the true test of a great mind is to throw away one’s bounty and still to give. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Consider within yourself, whether you have always shown gratitude to those to whom you owe it, whether no one’s kindness has ever been wasted upon you, whether you constantly bear in mind all the benefits which you have received. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca tells the story of when Socrates asked his friends for money to buy a cloak, and reminds us of our duty to bestow benefits on our friends before they even ask. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Wretched is he who can take pleasure in the size of the audit book of his estate, in great tracts of land cultivated by slaves in chains, in huge flocks and herds which require provinces and kingdoms for their pasture ground. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There is nothing which is hard to discover except those things by which we gain nothing beyond the credit of having discovered them. Whatever things tend to make us better or happier are either obvious or easily discovered. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The cynic Demetrius had an admirable saying about this, that one gained more by having a few wise precepts ready and in common use, than by learning many without having them at hand. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You do wrong if you are grateful only for the sake of your reputation, and not to satisfy your conscience. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do you not see how powerful people are driven to ruin by the want of candor among their friends, whose loyalty has degenerated into slavish obsequiousness? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Some things are of greater value than the price which we pay for them. You buy of a physician life and good health, the value of which cannot be estimated in money; from a teacher you buy the education of a gentleman and mental culture. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

That which you esteem so highly, that by which you think that you are made rich and powerful, owns but the shabby title of “house” or “money;” but when you have given it away, it becomes a benefit. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca discusses the widespread ingratitude of politicians toward their country and fellow citizens. Which raises the obvious question: why is it so difficult to find virtuous politicians? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Just as the stomach, when disordered by disease, turns every kind of sustenance into a source of pain, so whatever you entrust to an ill-regulated mind becomes to it a burden, an annoyance, and a source of misery. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A benefit is a voluntary act, but to do good to oneself is an instinctive one. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Diogenes was far more powerful, far richer even than Alexander, who then possessed everything; for there was more that Diogenes could refuse to receive than that Alexander was able to give. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The wise person begins everything with the saving clause, “If nothing shall occur to the contrary.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We proceed in the way in which reason, not absolute truth, directs us. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A good conscience is of value on the rack. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

While all other animals have sufficient strength to protect themselves, man is covered by a soft skin, has no powerful teeth or claws with which to terrify other creatures, but weak and naked by himself is made strong by union. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nature bestows upon us all this immense advantage, that the light of virtue shines into the minds of all alike; even those who do not follow her, behold her. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca makes an argument that we have a duty to help others based on the providential nature of the universe. But the universe does not have a providential nature. Fortunately, there is a way to rescue Seneca's conclusion. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you were to call God Fate, you would not lie; for since fate is nothing more than a connected chain of causes, he is the first cause of all upon which all the rest depend. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca, though he acknowledges that women are perfectly capable of virtue, characterizes Epicureans as "effeminate." And in today's passage he comes across as far more critical of Epicurus than he is usually regarded to be. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is not a good thing to live, but to live well. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whereby Seneca displays a bit too casual of an attitude toward slavery, a particular instance of a broader problem for Stoicism when it comes to social and political issues. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No day is appointed for repayment of a benefit, as there is for borrowed money; consequently he who has not yet repaid a benefit may do so hereafter: for tell me, pray, within what time a person is to be declared ungrateful? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca explains why it makes no sense to pass laws to enforce virtuous behavior, such as some modern laws against marital infidelity. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Being always intent upon new objects of desire, we think, not of what we have, but of what we are striving to obtain. Those whose mind is fixed entirely upon what they hope to gain, regard with contempt all that is their own already. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

They call the gods neglectful of us because we have not been given health which even our vices cannot destroy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Ingratitude is caused by excessive self-esteem, by that fault innate in all mortals, of taking a partial view of ourselves and our own acts, by greed, or by jealousy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Someone may be a worthy person for me to receive a benefit from, but it will hurt them to give it. For this reason I will not receive it, because they are ready to help me to their own prejudice, or even danger. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No one incurs any obligation by receiving what it was not in his power to refuse; if you want to know whether I wish to take it, arrange matters so that I have the power of saying ‘No.’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

As we refuse cold water to the sick, or swords to the grief-stricken or remorseful, so must we persist in refusing to give anything whatever that is hurtful, although our friends earnestly and humbly beg for it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You should be satisfied with the approval of your own conscience; if not, you do not really delight in doing good, but in being seen to do good. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Since no impulse of the human mind can be approved of, even though it springs from a right feeling, unless it be made into a virtue by discretion, I forbid generosity to degenerate into extravagance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The next point to be defined is, what kind of benefits are to be given, and in what manner. First let us give what is necessary, next what is useful, and then what is pleasant, provided that they be lasting. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Our ancestors before us have lamented, and our children after us will lament, as we do, the ruin of morality, the prevalence of vice, and the gradual deterioration of mankind; yet these things are really stationary. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds us that virtue ethics is about motivations and the improvement of one's character, not just about material help, as much as the latter may be needed. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What value has the crown in itself? or the purple-bordered robe? or the judgment-seat and car of triumph? None of these things is in itself an honour, but is an emblem of honour. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do not grow weary, perform your duty, and act as becomes a good person. Help one with money, another with credit, another with your favor; this one with good advice, that one with sound maxims. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The book-keeping of benefits is simple: it is all expenditure; if any one returns it, that is clear gain; if he does not return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake of giving. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Let us bestow benefits, not put them out at interest. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Among the numerous faults of those who pass their lives recklessly and without due reflexion, I should say that there is hardly any one so hurtful to society as this, that we neither know how to bestow or how to receive a benefit. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Atilius Regulus in his second consulship was taken prisoner in Africa by the stratagem of Xanthippus, a Spartan general serving under the command of Hannibal’s father Hamilcar. … --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Pray, tell me, does it coincide with the character of your good person to lie for their own profit, to slander, to overreach, to deceive? Nay, verily; anything but that! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

“When a man enters the foot-race,” says Chrysippus with his usual aptness, “it is his duty to put forth all his strength and strive with all his might to win; but he ought never with his foot to trip, or with his hand to foul a competitor.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero presents the Stoic argument that we are born to be virtuous, meaning prosocial. The Epicureans thought we are born to seek pleasure and avoid pain. They both had a point. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains that ethical reasoning is akin to mathematics: it begins with certain axioms that are taken for granted. Which axioms does your ethical thinking assume to be true? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Those who say that regard should be had for the rights of fellow-citizens, but not of foreigners, would destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Injustice is fatal to social life and fellowship between people. For, if we are so disposed that each, to gain some personal profit, will defraud or injure his neighbor, then the bonds of human society must of necessity be broken. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If your friend were a tyrant, would you kill him? That is the situation that Brutus faced with respect to Caesar, and which Cicero analyzes in this episode. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There were, broadly speaking, two major clusters of Hellenistic philosophies: the Socratic ones and, for lack of a better term, the ataraxic ones. Let's take a look at the differences. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whether moral goodness is the only good, as the Stoics believe, or whether, as the Peripatetics think, it is the highest of many goods, it is beyond question that expediency can never conflict with moral rectitude. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

But the chief thing in all public administration and public service is to avoid even the slightest suspicion of self-seeking. For to exploit the state for selfish profit is not only immoral; it is criminal, infamous. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We must apologize also, to the best of our ability, if we have involuntarily hurt anyone’s feelings, and we must by future services and kind offices atone for the apparent offense. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Relieving the poor is a form of charity that is a service to the state as well as to the individual. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The reason for making constitutional laws was the same as that for making kings. For what people have always sought is equality of rights before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Think of the aqueducts, canals, irrigation works, breakwaters, artificial harbors; how should we have these without the work of people? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is nowadays accepted that a thing may be morally right without being expedient, and expedient without being morally right. No more pernicious doctrine than this could be introduced into human life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

As other schools maintain that some things are certain, others uncertain, we, differing with them, say that some things are probable, others improbable. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

And if someone lives who would belittle the study of philosophy, I quite fail to see what in the world they would see fit to praise. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

And since my mind could not be wholly idle, I thought that the most honourable way for me to forget my sorrows would be by turning to philosophy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If wisdom is the most important of the virtues, as it certainly is, it necessarily follows that that duty which is connected with the social obligation is the most important duty. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Moderation is the science of doing the right thing at the right time. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We are called to make important decisions about our life and career when we are young and immature. That's why engaging in critical philosophical reflection as soon as possible is crucial for our happiness. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero relates that the Stoic Panaetius thought there are four fundamental aspects to our character, and that they shape our roles in society. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Here is how to balance the serious and the playful components of your life, what psychologists call the eudaimonic and hedonic aspects of existence. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells us that there is a harmonious beauty in the relationship between one's virtuous character and that person's actions. The relationship being analogous to that between physical beauty and health. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

In administering punishment it is above all necessary to allow no trace of anger. It is to be desired that they who administer the government should be like the laws, which are led to inflict punishment not by wrath but by justice. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

First, keep the good of the people so clearly in view that regardless of your own interests you will make your every action conform to that; second, care for the welfare of the whole body politic and do not let the interests of one party betray the rest. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Those whom Nature has endowed with the capacity for administering public affairs should put aside all hesitation, enter the race for public office and take a hand in directing the government. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There is nothing more honourable and noble than to be indifferent to money, if one does not possess it, and to devote it to beneficence and liberality, if one does possess it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics, therefore, correctly define courage as "that virtue which champions the cause of right." For nothing that lacks justice can be morally right. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Eric Weiner, the author of The Socrates Express, put it nicely: “Duty [is] not obligation. There is a difference. Duty comes from inside, obligation from outside.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Of all the bonds of fellowship, there is none more noble, none more powerful than when good people of congenial character are joined in intimate friendship. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero reminds us that in virtue ethics intentions are fundamental. If you do an act of kindness in order to receive a favor, then you have done no kindness at all. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero argues that we ought to consider what is the best way for us to engage in acts of kindness. And that the fundamental criterion by which to judge their soundness is justice. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are some also who claim that they are occupied solely with their own affairs. They are traitors to social life, for they contribute to it none of their interest, none of their effort, none of their means. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I do not mean to find fault with the accumulation of property, provided it hurts nobody, but unjust acquisition of it is always to be avoided. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If we truly want to become better human beings, Cicero counsels, we should avoid two common mistakes. Let's take a look at what they are, and reflect on whether we ourselves have sometimes committed them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero argues that there are four fundamental concerns of morality: truth; the organization of society (including our duties toward others); the development of our character; and doing everything while exercising temperance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nature by the power of reason associates man with man in the common bonds of speech and life; she also prompts men to meet in companies, to form public assemblies, and to take part in them themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Consider if what you are doing is: (i) morally right; (ii) conducive to your happiness; and (iii) whether you may be rationalizing doing something wrong simply because it brings you comfort. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Every treatise on duty has two parts: one, dealing with the doctrine of the supreme good; the other with the practical rules by which daily life in all its bearings may be regulated. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Brave he surely cannot possibly be that counts pain the supreme evil, nor temperate he that holds pleasure to be the supreme good. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

On the discharge of our duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I know that there are some, whose wisdom is of a harsh rather than a brave character, who say that the sage never would mourn. They have never  been in the position of mourners,  otherwise their misfortune would have shaken their haughty philosophy out of them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Prolong the remembrance of your brother by inserting some memoir of him among your other writings: for that is the only sort of monument that can be erected by man which no storm can injure, no time destroy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For it is not human not to feel our sorrows, while it is unvirtuous not to bear them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Fortune has not chosen you as the only person in the world to receive so severe a blow: there is no house in all the earth, and never has been one, that has not something to mourn for. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Turn yourself away from these thoughts which torment you, and look rather at those numerous and powerful sources of consolation which you possess: look at your excellent brothers, look at your wife and your son. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

"But," you say, "he was taken away unexpectedly." Every man is deceived by his own willingness to believe what he wishes, and he chooses to forget that those whom he loves are mortal. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You need not think for how much longer you might have had him, but for how long you did have him. Nature gave him to you, as she gives others to other brothers, not as an absolute property, but as a loan. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If the dead retain no feeling whatever, my brother has escaped from all the troubles of life. What madness then for me never to cease grieving for one who will never grieve again? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

At such times let literature repay to you the debt which your long and faithful love has laid upon it, let it claim you for its high priest and worshipper: at such times let Homer and Virgil be much in your company. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If your brother wishes you to be tortured with endless mourning, he does not deserve such affection; if he does not wish it, dismiss the grief which affects you both. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I would force some drops to flow from these eyes, exhausted as they are with weeping over my own domestic afflictions, were it likely to be of any service to you. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Who can be so haughtily and peevishly arrogant as to expect that this law of nature by which every thing is brought to an end will be set aside in his own case, and that his own house will be exempted from the ruin which menaces the whole world itself? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What, indeed, have mortal hands made that is not mortal? The seven wonders of the world, and any even greater wonders which the ambition of later ages has constructed, will be seen some day leveled with the ground. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Speaking frankly, superstition, which is widespread among the nations, has taken advantage of human weakness to cast its spell over the mind of almost every man. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Which is more consonant with philosophy: to explain these apparitions by the superstitious theories of fortune-telling hags, or by an explanation based on natural causes? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We sleep every night and there is scarcely ever a night when we do not dream; then do we wonder that our dreams come true sometimes? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It was clever in the author to take care that whatever happened should appear foretold because all reference to persons or time had been omitted. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Surely, no one fails to see that the appearance and habits, and generally, the carriage and gestures of children are derived from their parents, not by the phases of the moon and by the condition of the sky. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is it not evident that these astrologers, these would-be interpreters of the sky are of a class who are utterly ignorant of the nature of the sky? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Myths would have no place in philosophy. It would have been more in keeping with your role as a philosopher to consider, first, the nature of divination generally, second, its origin, and third, its consistency. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

‘Flaminius,’ you say, ‘did not obey the auspices, therefore he perished with his army.’ But a year later Paulus did obey them; and did he not lose his army and his life in the battle of Cannae? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The incidents may have been fictitious; if not, then the fulfillment of the prophecy may have been accidental. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Explore the cause, if you can, of every strange thing that excites your astonishment. If you do not find the cause be assured, nevertheless, that nothing could have happened without a cause. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

In periods of fear and of danger, stories of portents are not only more readily believed, but they are invented with greater impunity. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

In the case of things that happen now by chance, now in the usual course of nature, it is the height of folly to hold the gods as the direct agents and not to inquire into the causes of such things. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

While Hannibal was in exile at the court of King Prusias he advised the king to go to war, but the king replied, ‘I do not dare, because the entrails forbid.’ ‘And do you,’ said Hannibal, ‘put more reliance in a piece of ox-meat than you do in a veteran commander?’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You say, ‘Jupiter’s statue was being set up at the very time the conspiracy was being exposed.’ You, of course, prefer to attribute this coincidence to a divine decree rather than to chance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Upon my word you Stoics surrender the very city of philosophy while defending its outworks! For, by your insistence on the truth of soothsaying, you utterly overthrow physiology. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Don’t you think, rather, that the bull lost his heart when he saw that Caesar, in his purple robe, had lost his head? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How did the soothsayers manage to agree among themselves what part of the entrails was unfavourable, and what part favourable; or what cleft in the liver indicated danger and what promised some advantage? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You ought to have employed arguments and reason to show that all your propositions were true and you ought not to have resorted to so-called occurrences — certainly not to such occurrences as are unworthy of belief. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Science, argues Cicero, makes reliable predictions of events based on the laws of nature. No such reliability is possible for mysticisms like divination. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero says that nobody actually takes soothsayers seriously, because when we want to actually accomplish something, we go to an expert in that domain, like a doctor, and not a to a seer or a prophet. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero is gearing up to respond to his brother's defense of the Stoic notion of divination. He will do so, however, while putting forth probable arguments, not declarations of certainty. As a good critical thinker ought to do. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains the main reason he writes philosophy: to be helpful to other people. But we also know he was helping himself to overcome the grief he felt at the death of his beloved daughter Tullia. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Quintus, Cicero's brother, makes one last - and pretty good - argument in favor of divination, an argument that anticipated a famous idea by the astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nothing has happened which was not bound to happen, and, likewise, nothing is going to happen which will not find in nature every efficient cause of its happening. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Quintus, Cicero's brother, mentions Socrates' famous daimon as evidence of divine influence. But it is more likely that Socrates himself simply meant the concept as a way to represent his conscience. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero makes reference to two problems, as we moderns may see them, with Stoic philosophy: the notion of an intelligence permeating the universe, and the idea that the body is a drag on the mind. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Quintus, Cicero's brother, relies on other people's testimony to establish the reality of divination. But as his brother, David Hume, and Carl Sagan observed, that sort of evidence is insufficient to establish his extraordinary claim. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Quintus, Cicero's brother, delivers yet another fallacious argument in defense of divination, one that implies that Epicurus got at least one thing right, despite how much Cicero obviously didn't like him or his philosophy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Quintus, Cicero's brother, puts forth yet another bad argument in favor of divination, one that unfortunately is still used by many today: if celebrity so-and-so says X, then X must be true... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero's brother, Quintus, uses a qualitative argument in defense of the notion of divination. The argument appears valid, but it is flawed because of the lack of quantification, which - to be fair - was invented only many centuries later. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero's brother, Quintus, invokes an analogy between a dice game and the structure of the universe to deploy what we today recognize as an argument from intelligent design. Which doesn't work. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero rejects the notion of divination on the grounds that there is no mechanism to explain it. He was wrong on the general epistemological principle, though right in the specific case. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells us that some Stoics disagreed with the majority opinion within the Stoa on the topic of divination. Indeed, there were multiple opinions on various subjects. Stoicism was never a rigid school of thought. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero's brother, Quintus, presents one Stoic argument in favor of divination: everyone knows it's true. This is an obvious logical fallacy. And yet, there are cases when it is justified to believe a majority opinion. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

These days are my best, because my mind is at leisure to attend to its own affairs, and at one time amuses itself with lighter studies, at another eagerly presses its inquiries into its own nature and that of the universe. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The best middle course between affection and hard common sense is both to feel regret and to restrain it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you regard the end of your days not as a punishment, but as an ordinance of nature, no fear of anything else will dare to enter the breast which has cast out the fear of death. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Why do you amass fortune after fortune? Are you unwilling to remember how small our bodies are? Is it not frenzy and the wildest insanity to wish for so much when you can contain so little? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How unhappy are they whose appetite can only be aroused by costly food! And the costliness of food depends not upon its delightful flavor and sweetness of taste, but upon its rarity and the difficulty of procuring it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whithersoever we betake ourselves two most excellent things will accompany us, namely, a common Nature and our own special virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No one loses anything by the frowns of Fortune unless they have been deceived by her smiles. The one who has not been puffed up by success, does not collapse after failure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Always stand as it were on guard, and mark the attacks and charges of Fortune long before she delivers them; she is only terrible to those whom she catches unawares. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

External circumstances have very little importance either for good or for evil: wise persons are neither elated by prosperity nor depressed by adversity. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You have gained nothing by so many misfortunes, if you have not learned how to suffer. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero reminds us that - when life is truly unbearable and we can no longer act virtuously - we have one last escape route, the guarantor of our ultimate freedom: death itself. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We are all truly deaf with regard to those innumerable languages which we do not understand. Then, as I before referred the blind to the pleasures of hearing, so I may the deaf to the pleasures of sight. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The reply of Antipater the Cyrenaic to some women who bewailed his being blind, though it is a little too obscene, is not without its significance. “What do you mean?,” said he, “do you think the night can furnish no pleasure?” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains why being sent out of one's country is not a hardship worth worrying about, and tells us that Socrates regarded the whole world as his country. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells us about a letter written by Plato during his stint in Syracuse, explaining why temperance is the most fundamental of the four cardinal virtues. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

They relate, too, of Socrates, that, once when he was walking very fast till the evening, on his being asked why he did so, his reply was that he was purchasing an appetite by walking, that he might sup the better. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Socrates, when on one occasion he saw a great quantity of gold and silver carried in a procession, cried out, “How many things are there which I do not want!” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are three kinds of goods: the greatest being those of the mind; the next best those of the body; the third are external goods, as the Peripatetics call them, and the Old Academics differ very little from them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero gives us a rundown of the major Hellenistic schools, which differed in the way they understood eudaimonia, the life worth living. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Shall virtue, then, yield to pain? Shall the happy life of a wise person succumb to it? Good Gods! How base would this be! Spartan boys will bear to have their bodies torn by rods without uttering a groan. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells the famous story of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, and one of his flatterers, Damocles, who learns the hard way that what may look like a happy life is actually nothing of the sort. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero makes one of a number of arguments for why virtue is the only guarantor of a happy life. Let's examine the validity of the argument's structure and the soundness of its premises. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We are not, therefore, to form our judgment of philosophers from detached sentences, but from their consistency with themselves, and their ordinary manner of talking. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero makes a strong argument, based on Socratic and Stoic positions, for why virtue is necessary and sufficient for "happiness," if we translate the Greek word eudaimonia as "the life worth living." --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Socrates was the first who brought down philosophy from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good and evil. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells us that Pythagoras was the first to use the word philosopher and to explain what philosophy consists of. The Stoics will partially agree with Pythagoras' definition, but the disagreement is crucial. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We, who increase every approaching evil by our fear, and every present one by our grief, choose rather to condemn the nature of things than our own errors. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If virtue were but the slave of fortune, I am afraid that it would seem desirable rather to offer up prayers, than to rely on our own confidence in virtue as the foundation for our hope of a happy life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Where, then, are they who say that anger has its use? Can madness be of any use? But still it is natural. Can anything be natural that is against reason? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whenever we catch ourselves being too focused on trivial or unimportant things, we can willfully redirect our attention on the sort of activities that are truly good for us and for other people. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics, in truth, say, not only that their wise person may be a lover, but they even define love itself as an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

One thing alone seems to embrace the question of all that relates to the perturbations of the mind—the fact, namely, that all perturbations are in our own power; that they are taken up upon opinion, and are voluntary. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero advocates a standard Stoic technique: when facing adversity, remind yourself that many others have experienced something similar and have endured it. So can you. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Certainly the most effectual cure is to be achieved by showing that all perturbations are of themselves vicious, and have nothing natural or necessary in them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We should not take sorrows on ourselves upon another’s account; but we ought to relieve others of their grief if we can. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Anger is in no wise becoming in an orator, though it is not amiss to affect it. Do you imagine that I am angry when in pleading I use any extraordinary vehemence and sharpness? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What is Chrysippus’s definition? Fortitude, says he, is the knowledge of all things that are bearable, or an affection of the mind which bears and supports everything in obedience to the chief law of reason without fear. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Take care how you make courage to depend in the least on rage. For anger is altogether irrational, and that is not courage which is void of reason. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For whoever prescribes bounds to vice admits a part of it, which, as it is odious of itself, becomes the more so as it stands on slippery ground, and, being once set forward, glides on headlong, and cannot by any means be stopped. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There is an important distinction to be made between instrumental reason, which is morally neutral, and what the Stoics call "right" reason, or virtue, which comes with a built-in moral prescription. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero says that our mind becomes sick when our opinions and judgments are not coherent with each other, just like our body becomes sick when one of its parts is in disharmony with the rest. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Money, fame, and sexual pleasure are not problematic per se. They may be preferred or dispreferred, so long as they don’t control us and lead us away from a virtuous life. Own your desires and pleasures, do not be own by them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Intemperance, which is in opposition to reason, inflames, confounds, and puts every state of the mind into a violent motion. Thus, grief and fear, and every other perturbation of the mind, have their rise from intemperance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero continues his classification of the emotions as seen by the Stoics. Envy, for instance, is a type of grief generated by the mistaken belief that the prosperity of another is an injury to ourselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero gives a nice rundown of the Stoic theory of emotions, which holds up well according to modern cognitive science. Emotions have cognitive components, so we can challenge them when they are not good for us. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If our concerns are in agreement with reason, they are healthy; but fear is not in agreement with reason, and it is therefore unhealthy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Where this strong desire is consistent and founded on prudence, it is by the Stoics called volition. And this they define it thus: volition is a reasonable desire. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Zeno’s definition, then, is this: “A perturbation” (which he calls “pathos”) “is a commotion of the mind repugnant to reason, and against nature.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The sage will achieve a state of apatheia, meaning lack of disturbance from unhealthy emotions like fear, anger, and hatred. But she will also experience healthy emotions, like love, joy, and a sense of justice. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero very clearly and succinctly explains the difference among five Hellenistic takes on grief, including two Stoic ones, one by Cleanthes (the second head of the Stoa) and one by Chrysippus (the third head). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Grief arises from an opinion of some present evil, which includes this belief, that it is incumbent on us to grieve. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Most people appear to be unaware what contradictions these things are full of. They commend those who die calmly, but they blame those who can bear the loss of another with the same calmness. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero gives an example of people suddenly setting grief aside because they are absorbed in an urgent task. He infers that, therefore, grief is a matter of opinion, not of nature. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You see, the evil is in opinion, not in nature. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

[We can point] out that nothing has happened but what is common to human nature; [which] does not only inform us what human nature is, but implies that all things are tolerable which others have borne and are bearing. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero presents three major objections to Epicureanism, which he argues is a fundamentally incoherent philosophy. See if you agree with his analysis. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I should agree with Epicurus that we ought to be called off from grief to contemplate good things, if we could only agree upon what was good. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero says that if one is distraught she should read Socrates rather than listen to music. I disagree. Music may be soothing in the long run. Socrates is the long term cure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are two ways to think about potential future setbacks: emotionally, and rationally. The first approach only causes perpetual distress. The second one prepares our mind to deal with what may be coming. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells us that Anaxagoras, the Presocratic philosopher, was ready to accept the death of his son, because he had always known he was a mortal. This isn't lack of care, it's mental preparedness. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Grief, Cicero tells us, is a highly destructive emotion. While we shouldn't go around telling others not to grieve, we ourselves should take care to react differently to the loss of a loved one. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero gives us a classification of disturbances of the mind: when we think that something is good (now or in the future) but it actually isn't. And when we think that something is bad (now or in the future) but it actually isn't. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero makes an argument that the ideal Stoic, the sage, should feel neither envy nor pity. He was spectacularly wrong, and directly contradicted by Marcus Aurelius. Let's see why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The word envy comes from Latin for "looking too closely into other people's fortune." Let us see why this is most definitely not a thing that a Stoic should indulge in. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero presents an argument according to which grief is the result of lack of courage. As a modern Stoic, I beg to differ. Overcoming grief requires courage, but the feeling itself is natural and inevitable. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

They who are run away with by their lust or anger have quitted the command over themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains the Stoic "paradox" that everyone but the sage is mad. In the sense of not being reasonable. The good news is that we can work on being less mad, every day. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are more disorders of the mind than of the body, and they are of a more dangerous nature. And what disorders can be worse to the body than these two distempers of the mind, weakness and desire? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Popular fame is hasty and inconsiderate, and generally commends wicked and immoral actions, and throws discredit upon the appearance and beauty of honesty by assuming a resemblance of it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics put forth the notion that we are naturally virtuous (i.e., prosocial), and that it is society that leads us astray. Modern science confirms their intuition only in part. The fact remains, though, that the choice is ours. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What reason shall I assign, O Brutus, why, as we consist of mind and body, the art of curing the body should be so much sought after, but the medicine of the mind should not have been so much the object of inquiry? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you are satisfied with yourself when you have approved of what is right, you will not only have the mastery over yourself (which I recommended to you just now), but over everybody, and everything. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Posidonius was once afflicted by severe pain, and yet invited Pompey to discuss philosophy. He said: “Pain, it is to no purpose; notwithstanding you are troublesome, I will never acknowledge you an evil.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells the story of how Dionysius quit Stoicism because he was experiencing chronic pain, and how Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa, chastised him for not understanding the Stoic take on the issue. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero refers to the story of the Theban general Epaminondas, who sacrificed his life to free his people from the Spartan yoke. If he was capable of that, surely we can withstand the pains and setbacks of ordinary life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero tells the story of Zeno of Elea, a philosopher who withstood torture and faced death in order to overthrow tyranny. Remember that, the next time you complain about a toothache... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

While physical pain may be inevitable, our mental attitude makes a significant difference — for better or worse, depending on how we choose to see things. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Health has value, and is therefore preferred in the Stoic system. However, it is not an intrinsic good, and if in order to stay healthy you have to cheat others, you should accept the chances that you might get sick. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero suggests that getting used to one kind of discomfort or pain will allow us to more easily bear another kind. This is the basis for some modern Stoic exercises, like taking a cold shower. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I do not deny pain to be pain—for were that the case, in what would courage consist?—but I say it should be assuaged by patience, if there be such a thing as patience: if not, why do we speak so in praise of philosophy? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For the Epicureans virtue is instrumental in achieving ataraxia, a life of tranquillity. For the Stoics ataraxia is a byproduct, a result of the fact that the virtuous person can take on any challenge in life with a serene mind. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Poetry and fiction tug at our emotions. They are pleasant and powerful, but they may also be manipulative. While Plato's solution to ban poets is not a good idea, we should keep our critical sense on guard so not to be manipulated. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I cannot allow the wise person to be so indifferent about pain. If they bear it with courage, it is sufficient. For pain is, beyond all question, sharp, bitter, against nature, hard to submit to and to bear. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero on Epicureanism: "What disgrace, what ignominy, would he not submit to that he might avoid pain, when persuaded that it was the greatest of evils?" --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero and Brutus begin a conversation on the nature of pain. Brutus immediately concedes that pain isn't the worst possible evil. Infamy, which indicates a bad character, is to be avoided even at the cost of pain. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How few philosophers will you meet with whose life is conformable to the dictates of reason! Who look on their profession, not as a means of displaying their learning, but as a rule for their own practice! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Some people have a natural talent for music. But everyone can learn to play an instrument, even if they don't get to perform at Carnegie Hall. The same goes for philosophy: everyone can benefit from it, but not everyone is a sage. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted ourselves without resentment. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains to his friend Brutus why he writes about philosophy, and why in order to do so well he has to be acquainted with a large variety of fields of inquiry. Philosophical knowledge leads to the good life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How can that be miserable for one, which all must of necessity undergo? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero recounts an anecdote involving Trophonius and Agamedes, who built the temple of Apollo at Delphi. They asked the god for whatever was best, and the god granted it: three days later, they were found dead. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People carry out all sorts of rites to "take care" of the dead, even though there is no one to take care of. How about, instead, taking care of the people you love while they are still alive? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Diogenes the Cynic famously didn't care what happened to his body after death, since he believed there would be no sensation. That's an excellent reason to check your driver's license and see if you signed up for organ donation. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Aristotle discovered some insects whose entire life lasts one day. Compared to the vastness of time, our lives are not much longer. The question is whether we are able to live them fully. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Away, then, with those follies, such as that it is miserable to die before our time. What time do you mean? That of nature? But she has only lent you life, as she might lend you money, without fixing any certain time for its repayment. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The process of nature is this: that in the same manner as our birth was the beginning of things with us, so death will be the end; and as we were not concerned with anything before we were born, so neither shall we be after we are dead. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It never occurs to a man that such a disaster may befall himself. As if the number of the happy exceeded that of the miserable; or as if there were any certainty in human affairs. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero argues that sometimes people live too long for their own good. Which makes the Stoic point that life itself is not an intrinsic good, but the means by which we exercise virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Death, says Cicero, overtakes us quickly, and it is therefore endurable. It is the thought of leaving people and things behind that is painful. But the Stoics have a unique argument for why we should overcome that fear. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For the whole life of a philosopher is, as [Socrates] says, a meditation on death. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Why exactly to we grieve when loved ones are gone? Is it about them, about us? Does it depend on what we think will happen to them after death? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How, then, can you, or why do you, assert that you think that death is an evil, when it either makes us happy, in the case of the soul continuing to exist, or, at all events, not unhappy, in the case of our becoming destitute of all sensation? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero mentions a number of accounts of the nature of the soul, explaining that the Stoic take is that the soul is a physical attribute responsible for our faculty of judgment. And it perishes with us. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nature has presented us with this bargain: either not being born at all, or being born a mortal. Everything else is the fantasy of priests bent on scaring and controlling us, as Epicurus put it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We seem to be awfully bothered by the fact that we will one day no longer exist. And yet, we didn't suffer from the equally true fact that for a long time we didn't exist. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero disputes with his friend about whether we should be afraid of the afterlife, and concludes that we will not exist, and therefore we will not be feeling anything. It is superstition that generates fears of death. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Just prove to me that you are trustworthy, high-minded and reliable, and that your intentions are benign, and you’ll find that I won’t even wait for you to open your heart to me, I’ll be the first to implore you to lend an ear to my own affairs. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

As it is, you say, 'I will fix my attention tomorrow': which means, let me tell you, 'Today I will be shameless, inopportune, abject: others shall have power to vex me: today I will harbor anger and envy.' --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is it possible to escape error altogether? No, it is impossible: but it is possible to set one's mind continuously on avoiding error. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Now if such postponement of attention is profitable, it would be still more profitable to abandon it altogether: but if it is not profitable, why do you not keep up your attention continuously? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For my part I would be found by death busy with some humane task, whatever it be—something noble, beneficent, advancing the common weal. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You were shameless and shall be self-respecting, you were untrustworthy and you shall be trusted. If you look for greater things than these, go on doing as you do now: not even a god can save you. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

'Get up', says the trainer, 'and wrestle again, until you are made strong.' Let this be your attitude; for know that nothing is more amenable than the mind of a human being. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus draws a distinction between natural and greedy desires, reminding us that the first ones are part of a virtuous life, while the second ones are characteristic of a sick soul. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What then is the subject-matter of the philosopher? Is it a cloak? No, it is reason. What is his end? Is it to wear a cloak? No, but to keep his reason right. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Philosophy has been criticized since antiquity, and Epictetus explains why some of this criticism misses the point, and indeed shows that such critics could benefit from a bit of sound philosophical training. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

'This man washes hastily.' Does he do evil then? Not at all. What is it he does then? He washes hastily. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When I hear a man called happy because he is honored by Caesar I say, 'What is his portion?' 'A province.' Does he also get a judgement, such as a governor should have? Does he get the skill to use it? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

'But now the time is come to die.' What do you mean by 'die'? Do not use fine words, but state the facts as they are. 'Now is the time for your material part to be restored to the elements of which it was composed.' --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

'Exile?' Wherever I go, it will be well with me: for even here it was not the place that made me well off, but my judgements, and these I shall carry away with me, for no one can rob me of them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Those who pity me shall take their own views: I have neither hunger nor thirst nor cold, but their own hunger or thirst makes them imagine the same of me. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Although we are capable of writing and reading these sentiments, although we can praise them as we read, yet they do not bring conviction to us, nor anything like it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How will those who know despise one who is gentle and self-respecting? By those who do not know? What do you care for them? No craftsman cares for those who have no skill! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is everything judged by its outward form alone? On that principle you must call your waxen apple an apple. No, it must smell and taste like an apple: the outward semblance is not enough. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Either you’re going to be depressed when your wish is not realized or foolishly pleased with yourself if it is, overjoyed for the wrong reasons. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Very little is needed for everything to be upset and ruined, only a slight lapse in reason. It’s much easier for a mariner to wreck his ship than it is for him to keep it sailing safely. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you forfeit an external possession, make sure to notice what you get in return. If it is something more valuable, never say, ‘I have suffered a loss.’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Formerly, when you were devoted to worthless pursuits, your friends found you congenial company. But you can’t be a hit in both roles. To the extent you cultivate one you will fall short in the other. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A plant or animal fares poorly when it acts contrary to its nature; and a human being is no different. Well, then, biting, kicking, wanton imprisonment and beheading–is that what our nature entails? No; rather, acts of kindness, cooperation and good will. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whoever told you, ‘Walking is your irrevocable privilege’? I said only that the will to walk could not be obstructed. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What makes for freedom and fluency in the practice of writing? Knowledge of how to write. The same goes for the practice of playing an instrument. It follows that, in the conduct of life, there must be a science to living well. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

So you admit that you have at least one master. And don’t let the fact that Caesar rules over everyone, as you say, console you: it only means that you’re a slave in a very large household. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Who wants to live with delusion and prejudice, being unjust, undisciplined, mean and ungrateful? ‘No one.’ No bad person, then, lives the way he wants, and no bad person is free. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Everyone is fond of contemplation. Some make it the object of their lives: to us it is an anchorage, but not a harbor. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are three kinds of life, and it is a stock question which of the three is the best: the first is devoted to pleasure, the second to contemplation, the third to action. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What is the sage’s purpose in devoting themselves to leisure? They know that in leisure as well as in action they will accomplish something by which they will be of service to posterity. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is by no means desirable that one should merely strive to accumulate property without any love of virtue. Similarly, virtue placed in leisure without action is but an incomplete and feeble good thing, because she never displays what she has learned. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We have a habit of saying that the highest good is to live according to nature: now nature has produced us for both purposes, for contemplation and for action. … Nature has [also] bestowed upon us an inquiring disposition. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We are born by accident into a specific nation, but we naturally belong to the human cosmopolis. Reflecting on the nature of virtue and practicing it every day is one way to serve both our fellow citizens and humanity at large. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The duty of a human being is to be useful to his fellow human beings; if possible, to many of them; failing this, to a few; failing this, to oneself: for when we help others, we advance the general interests of humanity. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If the state is so rotten as to be past helping, if evil has entire dominion over it, the wise man will not labour in vain or waste his strength in unprofitable efforts. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epicurus says, “The wise man will not take part in politics, except upon some special occasion.” Zeno says, “The wise man will take part in politics, unless prevented by some special circumstance.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Would that all things were already known, that truth were unveiled and recognized, and that none of our doctrines required modification! but as it is we have to seek for truth in the company of the very men who teach it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Our Stoic philosophers say we must be in motion up to the very end of our life, we will never cease to labour for the general good, to help individual people, and when stricken in years to afford assistance even to our enemies. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We oscillate between desire and remorse, for we depend entirely upon the opinions of others, and it is that which many people praise and seek after, not that which deserves to be praised and sought after, which we consider to be best. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Leisure is important to be able to pursue the good life, and yet by itself it is not sufficient. Without proper education, we are far more likely to waste our time than to use it to good effect. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A brief existence is common to all things, and yet you avoid and pursue all things as if they would be eternal. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When you are offended at any one’s fault, immediately turn to yourself and reflect in what manner you yourself have erred: for example, in thinking that money is a good thing, or pleasure, or a bit of reputation, and the like. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping, coupling, evacuating, and so forth. Then what kind of men they are when they are imperious and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No longer talk at all about the kind of person that a good person ought to be, but be such. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

He who follows reason in all things is both tranquil and active at the same time, and also cheerful and collected. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another, and constantly attend to it, and exercise yourself about this part of philosophy. For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When you have assumed these names—good, modest, truthful, rational, a person of equanimity, and magnanimous—take care that you do not change these names; and if you should lose them, quickly return to them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Whether the universe is a concourse of atoms, or nature is a system, let this first be established: that I am a part of the whole that is governed by nature; next, that I stand in some intimate connection with other kindred parts. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If someone is mistaken, instruct them kindly and show them their error. But if you are not able, blame yourself, or not even yourself. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius says that the rational animal is consequently also a social animal. Not exactly. And yet, he was onto something. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The ancient Stoics believed in divination, because the world works by cause-effect. They were wrong on the specifics, but correct about the general idea, which is what still today underpins modern science. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The ancient Stoics used their knowledge of human, animal, and plant anatomy to argue for the intelligence and wisdom of the universe. Similar arguments were still advanced at the beginning of the 18th century. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The ancient Stoics advanced an argument for the intelligence of the universe very similar to the one deployed by modern creationists. The difference is that - given the advances of science - creationists ought to know better. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics make an argument against the Epicureans about the nature of the universe. For once, it is the Epicureans who got closer t the truth. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics put forth a three-pronged argument to arrive at the conclusion that the universe is governed wisely and providentially. Unfortunately, their argument is both invalid and unsound. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics rejected the gods of the Olympian pantheon as obvious projections of human psychology. But modern thinking leads to doubts even about the Stoics' own more sophisticated conception of God as Nature. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The complex patterns drawn by the planets in the sky seem to indicate the existence of a higher intelligence. But of course modern physics has other ideas. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero has one of his Stoic characters very explicitly state a notion about the nature of the cosmos that does not hold up to modern philosophical and scientific scrutiny. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero summarizes a beautiful argument by the Stoics to the effect that the world itself is wise. Unfortunately, the argument is based on unsound premises, and its conclusion is incoherent. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Zeno claimed that life can only come from life, and reason from reason, so he concluded that the universe was alive and endowed with reason. It's a beautiful idea, but one that has not withstood the test of modern science. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Zeno of Citium puts forth a compact argument to conclude that the universe as a whole, as distinct from individual beings within the cosmos, reasons. But the argument is based on a fallacious premise. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoa, constructs an argument for the existence of god that is unsound, that is, based on a faulty premise. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa, advances four bad arguments for the existence of the gods. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We need to demystify the Stoics somewhat. We moderns should value and respect ancient wisdom, but not to the point of mindless worship. This episodes provides two pertinent examples. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The ancient Stoics believed in divination. They were obviously mistaken about it. And yet the general principle they adopted was very much akin to the one underlying modern science. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We begin the study of book II of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, and we see that the Stoics begin with deploying what is nowadays known as an argument from design. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do you look at other people’s pimples while yon yourselves are covered with countless ulcers? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You are rendered over-proud by a fine house, as though it could never be burned, and your heads are turned by riches as though Fortune has not sufficient strength to swallow them up. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I shall make whatever befalls me become a good thing, but I prefer that what befalls me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause me annoyance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A Stoic finds herself at ease both in a fancy house where food is served on silver plates and under the bridge sharing the fare with beggars. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Riches, I say, are not a good thing; for if they were, they would make people good: now since that which is found even among bad people cannot be termed good, I do not allow them to be called so. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nature bids me do good to mankind. Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a benefit. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

He who believes giving to be an easy matter, is mistaken: it offers very great difficulties, if we bestow our bounty rationally, and do not scatter it impulsively and at random. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The philosopher may own wealth, but will not own wealth that has been torn from another, or which is stained with another’s blood: her must be obtained without wronging anyone, and without it being won by base means. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do not, then, make any mistake: riches belong to the class of desirable things. But if my riches leave me, they will carry away with them nothing except themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Health, for Aristotle, is a necessary requirement for a eudaimonic life. For the Stoics, it is preferred, other things being equal, but a life worth living is within grasp of everyone, regardless of their specific condition. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca gives us a handy list of fundamental goals to live a life worth living. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

That person is happy, whose reason recommends to them the whole posture of their affairs. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For no one can be styled happy who is beyond the influence of truth. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

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

These good things which men gaze at in wonder, which they crowd to see, which one points out to another with speechless admiration, are outwardly brilliant, but within are miseries to those who possess them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumor, living not by reason but by imitation of others. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca advises his brother, and us, not to listen to the random "shouts and clamors" of people, but to reflect carefully on what happiness is and how to achieve it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We know that certain things are features of the world. Like the existence of annoying people. Do not wish them away, because that is impossible. Rather, teach them, or bear with them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do not expect Plato’s Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not also be governed by it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Other people's opinions are not under your control, so focus instead on your own judgments and decisions to act or not to act. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

As you yourself are a component part of a social system, so let every act of yours be a component part of social life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

All things are changing: and you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe, too. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Things stand outside of us, themselves by themselves, neither knowing anything of themselves nor expressing any judgment. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Labor not as one who is wretched, nor yet as one who would be pitied or admired; but direct your will to one thing only: to act or not to act as social reason requires. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you are able, correct by teaching those who do wrong; but if you cannot, remember that indulgence is given to you for this purpose. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Our fear of pain and our desire for pleasure sometimes lead to injustice. Let that not be the case. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius thinks injustice is a type of impiety against the cosmos. Modern Stoics have updated the concept, since we don't believe the universe to be a sentient living being. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

From a Stoic point of view, there is absolutely nothing more important in life than to exercise our virtue in order to help our fellow brothers and sisters of the human cosmopolis. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The wise person will not pity others, but will help them and be of service to them, seeing that he is born to be a help to all people and a public benefit. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca details the characteristics of the ideal ruler. We should look for the same in the people who govern us. And in ourselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

No school of philosophy is more gentle and benign, none is more full of love towards man or more anxious to promote the happiness of all. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The virtues are never in contradiction with each other. The vices are never good for the people who indulge them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We should all follow Seneca's advice, resisting the urge for revenge and punishment, and practicing mercy and forgiveness. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Both rulers and ordinary people sometimes turn cruelty into a pleasure. It seriously undermines the most precious thing we all have: our character. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds us that the human animal is a delicate thing, forgiveness for his mistakes is often in order. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Turns out that, when the proper criteria are followed, it is almost never the time to use violence, either as a society, or as individuals. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca provides a historically accurate analysis of the life of Octavian Augustus, the first Roman emperor. With implications for how to live our own lives. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A cruel reign is disordered and hidden in darkness, and while all shake with terror at the sudden explosions, not even he who caused all this disturbance escapes unharmed. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds us that prosecutors and judges might be corrupted, and that we have to take this into account when we act. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca issues a stern reminder to Nero about the responsibilities of government. It can all too easily be applied today. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca warns that the cruelty of people in charge of government can have massive consequences. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds Nero, and us, that not doing the right thing is first and foremost injurious to ourselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

With great power comes great responsibility, as both Seneca and Spider-Man agree. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca makes an epistemic argument to convince us that it is better to err on the side of clemency, rather than punishment. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca makes an argument in favor of a broad conception of clemency, not just on behalf of the guilty, but of the innocent and the virtuous. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca flatters Nero at the same time as he issues veiled threats to the new emperor, in case he steers from the right path. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We begin the study of the controversial On Clemency, through which Seneca tried to steer Nero's course for the good of the Roman people. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus and Seneca agree: our own death is the ultimate test of our character, and philosophy is a long journey to prepare us for it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

'What then, if I fall ill?' You shall bear illness well. 'Who shall tend me?' God, and your friends. 'I shall lie on a hard bed.' But you can do it like a man. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When you think about it, it turns out that we have far less control over things and people than we think, and therefore far less blame. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus says that our moral improvement is not like the Olympic Games: when we fail, we can resume immediately, not having to wait four years. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus advises us to live the life we have, in the place we are, rather than indulge in regret for what we may have lost. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus gives us a very practical pointer about how to incorporate Stoic precepts in our lives. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There is a proper time for everything, including enjoying your loved ones. Keep it in mind, before they're gone. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus tells us what happens when a person is truly free. Tyrants begin to tremble. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

At Olympia you do not want anything else; you are content to have been crowned at Olympia. Does it seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be noble and good and happy? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

How can you wish at the same time to grow old and not to see the death of any that you love? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Friends, the school of a philosopher is a hospital. When you leave, you should have suffered, not enjoyed yourself. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

‘He’s a clever young man and a fan of rhetoric.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘He praises me.’ Oh, well, that proves it, of course. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Let us play our roles in life well. Not acting lik a sheep, gently but at random; nor destructively, like a wild beast. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Look, can you be forced to assent to what appears to you wrong?’ ‘No.’ ‘Or to dissent from the plain truth?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then you see you do have within you a share of freedom.’ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

My mind represents for me my medium – like wood to a carpenter, or leather to a shoemaker. The goal in my case is the correct use of impressions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

So you can talk the right talk about Stoicism. But do you also walk the right walk? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Those who have learnt precepts and nothing more are anxious to give them out at once, just as men with weak stomachs vomit food. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I have a bad neighbor – bad, that is, for himself. For me, though, he is good: he exercises my powers of fairness and sociability. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner – and my accuser is my sparring partner. He trains me in patience, civility and even temper. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

For God’s sake, stop honoring externals, quit turning yourself into the tool of mere matter, or of people who can supply you or deny you those material things. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

‘Being healthy is good, being sick is bad.’ No, my friend: enjoying health in the right way is good; making bad use of your health is bad. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When people say that the unjust person is better off because he has more money, what exactly is their system of values? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Keep well out of the sun, then, so long as your principles are as pliant as wax. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Are you proud of things for which you don't really deserve credit? Or for things that are not important? Reflect on this, and set your priorities straight. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus reminds us to draw a distinction between our objective situation and the way we feel about it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We should always examine our impressions and ask whether they pass the test: are they in according with reason? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

'My brother ought not to have behaved so to me.' No, but it is his business to look to that; however he may behave, I will deal with him as I ought. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If now is the time for fever, take your fever in the right way; if for thirst, thirst in the right way, if for hunger, hunger aright. Is it not in your power? Who will hinder you? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus explains one of the most powerful techniques in the Stoic toolkit for a better and more meaningful life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

You have vessels of gold, but your reason--judgements, assent, impulse, will--is of common clay. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus argues that rational creatures will always oppose tyrannical governments. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus draws a distinction between philosophy pursued for its own sake and philosophy as the art of life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Socrates liked to daily monitor his moral self-improvement. How can we do the same? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus asks us to think about what we'd like to be doing when death will overtake us. It's an interesting exercise in self-knowledge. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What, after all, are sighing and crying, except opinions? What is ‘misfortune’? An opinion. And sectarian strife, dissension, blame and accusation, ranting and raving – they all are mere opinion. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus reminds us that to become a better person we need to apply our reasoning faculty to arrive at better judgments. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus puts to rest the notion that Stoics are supposed to suppress their emotions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are three areas of training in Stoic ethics: to desire the proper things, to act properly in the world, and to arrive at the best possible judgments. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Epictetus stresses the difference between physical and inner beauty. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca notices that people fear old age in part because they fear irrelevance. But no one is irrelevant so long as they keep striving to be better human beings. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People who seek external goods become the slaves of those who happen to have the power to grant such goods. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What sort of things are truly important in your life, and why? Should you be reconsidering your current priorities? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People with misguided priorities live a wretched life, so let's get our priorities straight and aim for a serene existence instead. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca writes a poignant passage reminding us of the futile waste of human life that war is. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds us what is the proper Stoic attitude toward past, present, and future. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Honors, statues, and wealth, don't last much after one's death. Philosophy is forever. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The philosophers of the past are your true friends: they give wisdom without asking for money, or imperiling your life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds us of the span of philosophical inquiry, and of how delightful it is to engage with the greatest minds from across time and cultures. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Read the great minds of humanity, those that have insights on how to live a meaningful life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca criticizes the slaughter of people and animals for the sake of entertainment. Today, the suffering continues, in slaughterhouses. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Thought experiment: if you knew you were to die soon, what sort of things would you prioritize, and what let go of entirely? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The mind that is untroubled and tranquil has the power to roam into all the parts of its life. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Old age surprises people while their minds are still childish, and they come to it unprepared and unarmed, for they have made no provision for it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long — he has existed long. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and — what will perhaps make you wonder more — it takes the whole of life to learn how to die. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Are you not ashamed to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Examine how you spend your time, decide how to improve, and don't wait until tomorrow to chance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We are very careful with the management of our money, but far less so with that of our most precious commodity: time. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is life too short? Depends on what you do with it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero reminds us that how we experience pain -- both physical and emotional -- in part depends on how we mentally approach the experience. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero reminds us of the quintessential Stoic motto: we should live in accordance with nature. It's a crucial concept, spanning the arc of ancient Stoicism, from Zeno of Citium to Marcus Aurelius. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero articulates a Stoic syllogism aiming at demonstrating that the good life is a moral life. We look at whether the syllogism is valid and sound. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The wise person is happy because she is in complete control of the chief good in life: the moral good. Everything else is a preferred or dispreferred (moral) indifferent. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains the notions of preferred indifferents and of the dichotomy of control by means of one of the most famous metaphors in Stoic literature: a discussion what is and is not up to an archer attempting to hit a target. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

According to Stoic moral developmental psychology we begin life as self centered organisms, whose prosocial behavior develops initially by instinct, and then proceeds further with the aid of reason. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Things like health and wealth are choiceworthy. But what gives them value is, specifically, that they are the raw materials through which we exercise our chief good: virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains that human beings are naturally drawn to the use of reason, beginning when they are children. He also talks about the Stoic concept of katalepsis, the kind of impression so strong that it is undeniable. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero has Cato the Younger explain a fundamental concept of Stoic developmental psychology: how virtue is rooted in innate self love, and how we do things that are good for us regardless of pleasure and pain. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains why philosophy needs a technical vocabulary, and we look at the sort of issues this may cause when talking to people who are unfamiliar with such vocabulary. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

At the onset of book III of Cicero's De Finibus, Cato the Younger explain the difference between the Epicurean and Stoic positions on the respective values of pleasure and virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius contemplates two possible scenarios for what happens after we die. Neither one of which justifies our fears on the matter. Better to focus instead on the fact that we are alive, here and now. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius reminds us that just as we do not control other people's bodies, so we do not control their opinions and judgments. We should, therefore, be concerned chiefly with improving our own. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

“A cucumber is bitter.” Throw it away. “There are briars in the road.” Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The mind that is free from passions is a citadel, for we have nothing more secure to which we can fly for refuge and repel every attack. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius reminds himself that if life is unbearable, one has the option to leave. But we have a duty, toward ourselves and others, to stay, if at all possible. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Take me and cast me where you will; for there I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper constitution. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Those who rather pursue posthumous fame do not consider that the people of tomorrow will be exactly like these whom they cannot bear now; and both are mortal. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is my delight to keep the ruling faculty sound without turning away from any of the things that happen to people, but looking at and receiving all with welcoming eyes and using everything according to its value. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

I see no virtue that is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue that is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do not let your thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles that you may expect to befall you: but on every occasion ask yourself, What is there in this that is intolerable and past bearing? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

All things happen in a more endurable fashion to people who are prepared for them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Freedom consists in raising one’s mind superior to injuries and becoming a person whose pleasures come from himself alone. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is a sort of revenge to spoil a man’s enjoyment of the insult he has offered to us … the success of an insult lies in the sensitiveness and rage of the victim. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do these things befall me deservedly or undeservedly? If deservedly, it is not an insult, but a judicial sentence; if undeservedly, then he who does injustice ought to blush, not I. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When insulted, Cato did not flare up and revenge the outrage, he did not even pardon it, but ignored it, showing more magnanimity in not acknowledging it than if he had forgiven it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The wise man will not admire himself even if many rich men admire him; for he knows that they differ in no respect from beggars — nay, are even more wretched than they; for beggars want but a little, whereas rich men want a great deal. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Wise persons are without anger, which is caused by the appearance of injury. And they could not be free from anger unless they were also free from injury, which they know cannot be done to them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca argues that Cato the Younger was a sage, but a modern biography casts some doubt on that. Do sages ever walk the earth? Who would you put forth as your favorite candidate? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Bear adversity with calm and prosperity with moderation, neither yielding to the former nor trusting to the latter. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Fortune can take nothing away save what she gave. Now fortune does not give virtue; therefore she does not take it away. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Invulnerable is not that which is never struck, but that which is never wounded. In this class I will show you the wise person. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

"For Cato did not outlive freedom, nor did freedom outlive Cato." On the Stoic conception of suicide. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

“But the way by which we are asked to climb is steep and uneven.” What then? Can heights be reached by a level path? Yet they are not so sheer and precipitous as some think. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nobody wants to do what is bad for them. So when the thief steals, he is under the wrong impression about what is and is not good for him. We should therefore pity him, and help him understand, if possible. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A student asks Epictetus whether we should really bother to learn logic. "Would you like me to provide you with an argument?" Yes. "How would you know if my argument is a good one, if you don't understand logic?" QED. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

According to Epictetus, the root of our problems is that we don't know, or refuse to acknowledge, how the world works. As opposed as to how we wished it worked. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If someone gets the habit of writing ungrammatically, their art is bound to be destroyed and perish. In the same way the person of honor keeps their character by honest acts and loses it by dishonest. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

What sets aside human beings from the rest of the animal world is our ability to reason and our propensity to be pro-social. So let's reason well, and be helpful to fellow humans. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Since plants do not even have the power of perception, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not applicable to them. Evidently, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ presume the power of using impressions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The island of Gyara was the exile place of choice for troublesome people during the Roman Empire. How would you handle being sent into exile? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Because we’re the only animals who not only die but are conscious of it even while it happens, we are beset by anxiety. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Because what is a human being? Part of a community – the community of gods and men, primarily, and secondarily that of the city we happen to inhabit, which is only a microcosm of the universe in toto. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Human beings are neither mindless drones in a beehive nor entirely self-contained individuals. We are highly social animals, and a number of ethical implications follow from this biological fact. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A nice analogy from Epictetus between our choices in life and those we have when we go on a trip. Even when the trip doesn't end well... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Material things per se are indifferent, but the use we make of them is not indifferent. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Trust is crucial for intimate relationships, for friendships, and even among fellow citizens. Research shows that nations with the highest degree of self-reported happiness among its citizens are those in which people feel like they can trust each other. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We know how to analyze arguments, and have the skill a person needs to evaluate competent logicians. But in life what do we do? What today we say is good, tomorrow we'll swear is bad. That's because we don't pay attention. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

When I see that one thing, virtue, is supreme and most important, I cannot say that something else is, just to make you happy. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Some become captivated by all these things and don’t want to proceed further. One is captivated by deductive or equivocal arguments, someone else by yet another ‘inn’ of this kind; and there they stay and rot as if seduced by the Sirens. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People act like a traveller headed for home who stops at an inn and, finding it comfortable, decides to remain there. You’ve lost sight of your goal, man. You were supposed to drive through the inn, not park there. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Why should we, as though we were born to live forever, waste our tiny span of life in declaring anger against any one? Life is a matter which does not admit of waste, and we have no spare time to throw away. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is anyone surprised at being cold in winter? At being sick at sea? Or at being jostled in the street? The mind is strong enough to bear those evils for which it is prepared. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca gives us a rationale and detailed instructions on how too keep a philosophical journal. And modern cognitive science confirms that it works in order to improve self-analysis and let go of negative emotions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Money is what wearies out the law-courts, sows strife between father and son, concocts poisons, and gives swords to murderers just as to soldiers: it is stained with our blood. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do you ask, what is your greatest fault? It is, that you keep your accounts wrongly: you set a high value upon what you give, and a low one upon what you receive. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

A person will never be well off to whom it is a torture to see any one better off than themselves. Have I less than I hoped for? Well, perhaps I hoped for more than I ought. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It makes no sense to get angry with children or non-human animals, because they can't reason. So why get angry with an adult who has temporarily lost the use of reason? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Revenge takes up much time, and throws itself in the way of many injuries while it is smarting under one. We all retain our anger longer than we feel our hurt. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Let us  be more gentle one to another: we are bad people, living among bad people. There is only one thing which can afford us peace, and that is to agree to forgive one another. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Say to fortune: Do what you will, you are too feeble to disturb my serenity: this is forbidden by reason, to whom I have entrusted the guidance of my life: to become angry would do me more harm than your violence can do me. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca runs us through a long list of reasons why people do us wrong. And then concludes that we should be magnanimous, not vengeful, toward them, in part because they are human beings like us, and like us they make mistakes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Let us replace all of anger’s symptoms by their opposites; let us make our countenance more composed than usual, our voice milder, our step slower. Our inward thoughts gradually become influenced by our outward demeanor. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

While you are angry, you ought not to be allowed to do anything. Why?, do you ask? Because when you are angry there is nothing that you do not wish to be allowed to do. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

It is said that Socrates when he was given a box on the ear, merely said that it was a pity a man could not tell when he ought to wear his helmet out walking. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Do something that relaxes you, change your environment to make it soothing, and most importantly don't engage in anything major if you are tired, stressed, or hungry. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We should live with the quietest and easiest-tempered persons, not with anxious or with sullen ones: for our own habits are copied from those with whom we associate. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Anger pays a penalty at the same moment that it exacts one: it forswears human feelings. The latter urge us to love, anger urges us to hatred: the latter bid us do good, anger bids us do harm. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Other vices affect our judgment, anger affects our sanity. Its intensity is in no way regulated by its origin: for it rises to the greatest heights from the most trivial beginnings. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Men, frantic with rage, call upon heaven to slay their children, to reduce themselves to poverty, and to ruin their houses, and yet declare that they are not either angry or insane. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

If anyone is angry with you, meet their anger by returning benefits for it: a quarrel which is only taken up on one side falls to the ground: it takes two people to fight. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Revenge and retaliation are words which men use and even think to be righteous, yet they do not greatly differ from wrong-doing. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People think some things unjust because they ought not to suffer them, and some because they did not expect to suffer them: we think what is unexpected is beneath our deserts. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Is it a good person who has wronged you? Do not believe it. Is it a bad one? Do not be surprised at this; by their sin they have already punished themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Someone will be said to have spoken ill of you; think whether you did not first speak ill of them; think of how many persons you have yourself spoken ill. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We are so foolish that we actually get angry at inanimate objects, who neither deserve nor feel our anger. But in fact, no one deserves our anger: not animals, not children, and not even adults. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Often the pretense of passion will do what the passion itself could not have done. Sometimes, it may be effective to fake anger. Just don't make the mistake of actually becoming angry. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We need a long-breathed struggle against permanent and prolific evils; not, indeed, to quell them, but merely to prevent their overpowering us. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

To avoid being angry with individuals, you must pardon the whole mass, you must grant forgiveness to the entire human race. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics’ opinion is that anger can venture upon nothing by itself, without the approval of mind. It follows that we are in charge, not whatever circumstances happen to trigger our initial reactions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca uses Aristotle's own analogy between negative emotions and weapons to show that it is flawed: we control our weapons, but destructive emotions control us. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People who do wrong should be treated like sick patients. By all means, restrain them if they are liable to hurt others. But do not be angry with them. They need help. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/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://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

In consoling Marcia, Seneca reminds her that one's virtue is on display when the universe challenges with adversity, not when life glides easily with a favoring current. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Our feelings may end up feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a morbid delight in grief. But we can challenge the cognitive component of our own emotions and move forward. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Stoicism leads us to a life of benevolence toward other human beings, in pursuit of a constant refinement of our  judgments and understanding of how the world actually works — so that we can more effectively live in it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Plato said that "every soul is deprived of the truth against its will." Which means that we need to treat people who make mistakes with sympathy, not criticize and dismiss them. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero's reports a famous metaphor used by Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, to explain the progression from perception to assent to comprehension to knowledge. Which is then used as a reminder about the limits of our own knowledge. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Paris stole Menelaus' wife, Helen, thereby starting the Trojan War. He did that because he assented to the impression that it was good to pursue the wife of his host, and that misjudgment resulted in ten years of misery for so many. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

There are, as you know, vices which are next-door to virtues. Carelessness looks like ease, and rashness like bravery. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

We take a lot of things for granted, when life is going well for us. But — fools that we are — we really appreciate what we had only once we’ve lost it. That's why the Stoics devised a series of exercises in mild self-deprivation. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

People think that externals are good, and then, after having won their wish, and suffered much, they find them evil, or empty, or less important than they had expected. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Fortune sometimes favors villains and turns against good people. That's why our happiness should depend on our own decisions, not the vagaries of chance. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Nature has not given us such a generous and free-handed space of time that we can have the leisure to waste any of it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca reminds us that Alexander the Great conquered everything, except his own destructive emotions, which led to endless grief for him and his friends. Beware, therefore, of reacting in anger to your problems. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stoicmeditations/support