“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”
Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 258)
Archives
“Won’t you be walking in your predecessors’ footsteps? I surely will use the older path, but I find a shorter and smoother way, I’ll blaze a trail there. The ones who pioneered these paths aren’t our masters, but our guides. Truth stands open to everyone, it hasn’t been monopolized.”
Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 251)
“What wisdom or help would you be able to find today if you stopped caring about affiliations and reputations? How much more could you see if you just focused on merit?”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 253)
“It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth, for then you won’t tire and give up, if you aren’t busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 251)
“If you give things more time and energy than they deserve, they’re no longer lesser things. You’ve made them important by the life you’ve spent on them. And sadly, you’ve made the important things—your family, your health, your true commitments—less so as a result of what you’ve stolen from them.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 251)
“It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.”
Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 250)
“Outward transformation—in our clothes, in our cars, in our grooming—might feel important but is superficial compared with the inward change.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 249)
“One of the most fundamental principles of martial arts is that strength should not go against strength. That is: don’t try to beat your opponent where they are strongest. But that’s exactly what we do when we try to undertake some impossible task we haven’t bothered to think through. Or we let someone put us on the spot. Or we say yes to everything that comes our way.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 247)
“For nothing outside my reasoned choice can hinder or harm it—my reasoned choice alone can do this to itself. If we would lean this way whenever we fail, and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God, I swear we would be making progress.”
Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 246)
“You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that—your impulses—reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 244)
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Ben Franklin, via The Daily Stoic (Page 242)