Stoicism Quotes - Page 2

Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.

Fourteen years without a mother had me believe I could be stoic when I finally met her.

Emilio was certainly within his rights not to reveal the sordid details of his childhood even to his friends. Or perhaps especially to his friends, whose good opinion of him, he might feel, would not survive the revelations.

There was a lot of pretense floating around; not just with aunties and all that but with emotions and how people saw you. They had a point. There's a lot to learn from that generation -- the stoic approach. I think it's disgusting how they've been forgotten about in this way. It's the American hippies' fault, they saw an in there, a way of making money out of bad moods. That's all it is most of the time. You can't expect to feel cock-a-hoop every minute of every day. My mam and dad's generation understood this. They were just thankful the bombs had stopped threatening their lives. They just wanted to get on with living.

Each of us is impermanent wave of energy folded into the infinite cosmic order. Acknowledgement of the fundamental impermanence of ourselves unchains us from the strictures of living a terrestrial life stuck like a needle vacillating between the magnetic pull of endless desire and the terror of death. Once we achieve freedom from any craving and all desires and we are relieved of all titanic fears, we release ourselves from living in perpetual distress. Once we rid ourselves from any impulse to exist, we discover our true place in the universal order. The composition of our life filament is exactly right when we accept the notion of living and dying with equal stoicism.

It was as if I'd lost some cosmic game of musical chairs; the song had stopped, I was left standing, and there was simply nothing to be dine about it.

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.

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

Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.

You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around and just leave, without looking back.

[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.

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.

And here lies the essential difference between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.

We all have problems. Or rather, everyone has at least one thing that they regard as a problem.

I've come to the point where I never feel the need to stop and evaluate whether or not I am happy. I'm just 'being', and without question, by default, it works.

Being a stoic does not mean being a robot. Being a stoic means remaining calm both at the height of pleasure and the depths of misery.

Progress daily in your own uncertainty. Live in awareness of the questions.

Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.

When you are disturbed by events and lose your serenity, quickly return to yourself and don't stay upset longer than the experience lasts; for you'll have more mastery over your inner harmony by continually returning to it.

She (the First Lady, entering the room with her gravely wounded husband) would admit fear but not despair.