William Irvine Quotes

#1. At spare moments in the day, make it a point to contemplate the loss of whatever you value in life. It can make you realize, if only for a time, how lucky you are - how much you have to be thankful for, almost regardless of your circumstances ...

William Braxton Irvine

#2. When it comes to desiring, we are all experts. If there were an Olympics of desiring, we would all make the team.

William Braxton Irvine

#3. If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. More generally, says Seneca, if we coddle ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by pleasure, nothing will seem bearable to us, and the reason things will seem unbearable is not because they are hard but because we are soft.

William B. Irvine

#4. Throughout the millennia and across cultures, those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquility.

William B. Irvine

#5. Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence.

William B. Irvine

#6. Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, "who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.

William B. Irvine

#7. The profound realization, thanks to the practice of Stoicism, that acquiring the things that those in my social circle typically crave and work hard to afford will, in the long run, make zero difference in how happy I am and will in no way contribute to my having a good life.

William B. Irvine

#8. reason tends to be the servant rather than the master of desire.

William B. Irvine

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

William B. Irvine

#10. How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have? THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question.

William B. Irvine

#11. Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world - in doing what we would now call science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he abandoned it to focus his attention on the human condition.

William B. Irvine

#12. One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get.

William B. Irvine

#13. The problem is that "bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters," and because they cannot control their desires, they can never find contentment.4

William B. Irvine

#14. ...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

#15. Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that "all things everywhere are perishable.

William B. Irvine

#16. We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

William B. Irvine

#17. Our goal should therefore be to become indifferent to other people's opinions of us. He adds that if we can succeed in doing this, we will improve the quality of our life.

William B. Irvine

#18. if we seek social status, we give other people power over us: We have to do things calculated to make them admire us, and we have to refrain from doing things that will trigger their disfavor.

William B. Irvine

#19. the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

William B. Irvine

#20. Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won't be able to fulfill.

William B. Irvine

#21. Pre-Socratic philosophy begins ... with the discovery of Nature; Socratic philosophy begins with the discovery of man's soul."3

William B. Irvine

#22. One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted.

William B. Irvine

#23. one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

William B. Irvine

#24. It is, after all, hard to know what to choose when you aren't really sure what you want.

William B. Irvine

#25. To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.18 The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life.

William B. Irvine

#26. OUR MOST IMPORTANT CHOICE in life, according to Epictetus, is whether to concern ourselves with things external to us or things internal. Most people choose the former because they think harms and benefits come from outside themselves.

William Irvine

#27. use our reasoning ability to drive away "all that excites or affrights us.

William B. Irvine

#28. We need, in other words, to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.

William B. Irvine

#29. Indeed, anger can be thought of as anti-joy.

William B. Irvine

#30. After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen.

William B. Irvine