Stoicism Philosophy Quotes

#1. The basic philosophy of stoicism is that you have nothing real external to your own consciousness, that the only thing real is in fact your consciousness.

Roger Avary

#2. What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.

Epictetus

#3. Even the least of our activities ought to have some end in view.

Marcus Aurelius

#4. There is, I assure you, a medical art for the soul. It is philosophy, whose aid need not be sought, as in bodily diseases, from outside ourselves. We must endeavor with all our resources and all our strength to become capable of doctoring ourselves.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#5. Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life.

Epictetus

#6. Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

Seneca.

#7. The philosopher's lecture room is a 'hospital': you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain; for you are not in good condition when you arrive.

Epictetus

#8. For in this Case, we are not to give Credit to the Many, who say, that none ought to be educated but the Free; but rather to the Philosophers, who say, that the Well-educated alone are free.

Epictetus

#9. Most of us are "living the dream" living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves.

William B. Irvine

#10. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Seneca.

#11. When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.

Marcus Aurelius

#12. [Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies - with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.

Seneca.

#13. Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.

Seneca.

#14. Man is mostly a collection of emotions, most of which he would do better not to be feeling.

Neel Burton

#15. ...we can do some historical research to see how our ancestors lived. We will quickly discover that we are living in what to them would have been a dream world that we tend to take for granted things that our ancestors had to live without...

William B. Irvine

#16. In his numerous historical and Scriptural works Bauer rejects all supernatural religion, and represents Christianity as a natural product of the mingling of the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies ...

Joseph McCabe

#17. Here is your great soul - the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

Seneca.

#18. It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body; for it is better to die than to live badly.

Epictetus

#19. Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.

Epictetus

#20. All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.

Seneca.

#21. 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.

Seneca.

#22. So the life of a philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god.

Seneca.

#23. During the Great Depression, the philosophy of grin-and-bear-it became a national coping mechanism.

Maureen Corrigan

#24. From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.

Marcus Aurelius

#25. What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

Seneca.

#26. Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

Marquis De Sade