The Daily Stoic - Holiday, Ryan  ## Metadata - Author: **Holiday, Ryan** - Full Title: The Daily Stoic - Category: #books ## Highlights - “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.5.4–5 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf46s9gm5k3mdacmckh2zrhp)) - “What is the fruit of these teachings? Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated—tranquility, fearlessness, and freedom. We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf475kg8txkp2zcbf9rn0shg)) - “How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements—how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!” —SENECA, ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4790x0rtrh60vve2h5x1k2)) - “All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf47dz3ata49zmyfpvn033gc)) - Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf47h22f6hq06mcwwwfhxf63)) - “Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It’s not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad.” —SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf47jnyg0g4v6eqy7xss1s9p)) - Law 29 of *The 48 Laws of Power* is: Plan All The Way To The End. Robert Greene writes, “By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.” The second habit in *The* *7 Habits of Highly Effective People* is: begin with an end in mind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf47nhrmykysj2fhtxjp6ab9)) - “A person who doesn’t know what the universe is, doesn’t know where they are. A person who doesn’t know their purpose in life doesn’t know who they are or what the universe is. A person who doesn’t know any one of these things doesn’t know why they are here. So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf47tsvnj265z1eddsbjsj3e)) - “The proper work of the mind is the exercise of choice, refusal, yearning, repulsion, preparation, purpose, and assent. What then can pollute and clog the mind’s proper functioning? Nothing but its own corrupt decisions.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf480882emb0v77aqvhz2f84)) - “We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself. Greatness of soul will be lost, which can’t stand out unless it disdains as petty what the mob regards as most desirable. —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf483f8rpxp0yp1n9z5wscs9)) - “Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf489f8rnbs8n68mqtert2n6)) - “The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material are straight that makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf48kagr6nyrcs0ydhfwgzk2)) - “For if a person shifts their caution to their own reasoned choices and the acts of those choices, they will at the same time gain the will to avoid, but if they shift their caution away from their own reasoned choices to things not under their control, seeking to avoid what is controlled by others, they will then be agitated, fearful, and unstable.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf48r9b4761d5cfberhxg1e3)) - “Keep this thought at the ready at daybreak, and through the day and night—there is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all outside of your sphere of choice, regarding nothing else as your possession, surrendering all else to God and Fortune.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf48sn56g4bjw3k57c5qb7zg)) - “We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country—anything with which we might associate.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf48tjnrcv8xcat09sq0rh18)) - “Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf48w07x664zf8ezw466kp62)) - “Man is pushed by drives but pulled by values.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf48ymbdq6wqg8yq0wqr1vw1)) - “Tranquility can’t be grasped except by those who have reached an unwavering and firm power of judgment—the rest constantly fall and rise in their decisions, wavering in a state of alternately rejecting and accepting things. What is the cause of this back and forth? It’s because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide—common opinion.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4907s30wtvnrhrbxyca88b)) - “So in the majority of other things, we address circumstances not in accordance with the right assumptions, but mostly by following wretched habit. Since all that I’ve said is the case, the person in training must seek to rise above, so as to stop seeking out pleasure and steering away from pain; to stop clinging to living and abhorring death; and in the case of property and money, to stop valuing receiving over giving.” —MUSONIUS RUFUS, LECTURES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf49c47r60k6f9etg2h3jp68)) - “I am your teacher and you are learning in my school. My aim is to bring you to completion, unhindered, free from compulsive behavior, unrestrained, without shame, free, flourishing, and happy, looking to God in things great and small—your aim is to learn and diligently practice all these things. Why then don’t you complete the work, if you have the right aim and I have both the right aim and right preparation? What is missing? . . . The work is quite feasible, and is the only thing in our power. . . . Let go of the past. We must only begin. Believe me and you will see.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf49gf4v1tkrj1147ty8hdqr)) - “Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf49m77pd42dx5dyh3z3c7ex)) - “Your principles can’t be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it’s continually in your power to reignite new ones. . . . It’s possible to start living again! See things anew as you once did—that is how to restart life!” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4a31df9h2r17rt4nd05ss9)) - “Ask yourself the following first thing in the morning: • What am I lacking in attaining freedom from passion? • What for tranquility? • What am I? A mere body, estate-holder, or reputation? None of these things. • What, then? A rational being. • What then is demanded of me? Meditate on your actions. • How did I steer away from serenity? • What did I do that was unfriendly, unsocial, or uncaring? • What did I fail to do in all these things?” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4aafwyyccn0tscebx58es3)) - “I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4afn0vc0y9daw5xq4wwsq7)) - “Let’s pass over to the really rich—how often the occasions they look just like the poor! When they travel abroad they must restrict their baggage, and when haste is necessary, they dismiss their entourage. And those who are in the army, how few of their possessions they get to keep . . .” —SENECA, ON CONSOLATION TO HELVIA ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4anmddrcmrh01ycg3p7vzh)) - That’s what Seneca is reminding us. As someone who was one of the richest men in Rome, he knew firsthand that money only marginally changes life. It doesn’t solve the problems that people without it seem to think it will. In fact, no material possession will. External things can’t fix internal issues. We constantly forget this—and it causes us so much confusion and pain. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4as4f6w41gyyf8x99s5dfp)) - “From Rusticus . . . I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4atcrxwq2wnr1dfmsgk29d)) - “What’s left to be prized? This, I think—to limit our action or inaction to only what’s in keeping with the needs of our own preparation . . . it’s what the exertions of education and teaching are all about—here is the thing to be prized! If you hold this firmly, you’ll stop trying to get yourself all the other things. . . . If you don’t, you won’t be free, self-sufficient, or liberated from passion, but necessarily full of envy, jealousy, and suspicion for any who have the power to take them, and you’ll plot against those who do have what you prize. . . . But by having some self-respect for your own mind and prizing it, you will please yourself and be in better harmony with your fellow human beings, and more in tune with the gods—praising everything they have set in order and allotted you.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4az9btj30ndpmh8t9y259w)) - “Erase the false impressions from your mind by constantly saying to yourself, I have it in my soul to keep out any evil, desire or any kind of disturbance—instead, seeing the true nature of things, I will give them only their due. Always remember this power that nature gave you.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4b47hrykn358zv358y6evv)) - “There are three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained. The first has to do with desires and aversions—that a person may never miss the mark in desires nor fall into what repels them. The second has to do with impulses to act and not to act—and more broadly, with duty—that a person may act deliberately for good reasons and not carelessly. The third has to do with freedom from deception and composure and the whole area of judgment, the assent our mind gives to its perceptions. Of these areas, the chief and most urgent is the first which has to do with the passions, for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf4b4hgtfva9bthne8gpxefp)) - “Take a good hard look at people’s ruling principle, especially of the wise, what they run away from and what they seek out.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6v75gh89sk5qgeaty5vm9p)) - “At every moment keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand, as a Roman and human being, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice—giving yourself a break from all other considerations. You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share. You can see how mastery over a few things makes it possible to live an abundant and devout life—for, if you keep watch over these things, the gods won’t ask for more.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6vengd26pgqkgzt8p1ayef)) - “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters—don’t wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6w53bkwvzrae2dwcb9wsz9)) - “Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on—it isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6w7d0162w1gekjgdf74153)) - “Frame your thoughts like this—you are an old person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6w7qzdpjsghggkvtwb5b3y)) - “When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6w7zj6mp2278t5pfznkasz)) - “Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6w8a1e0nma183s5b5fcsvp)) - “Don’t be bounced around, but submit every impulse to the claims of justice, and protect your clear conviction in every appearance.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6w94qcygn4949sx0a85qb7)) - “I don’t agree with those who plunge headlong into the middle of the flood and who, accepting a turbulent life, struggle daily in great spirit with difficult circumstances. The wise person will endure that, but won’t choose it—choosing to be at peace, rather than at war.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6wag8gvdh8sx44rw3z6x87)) - “Many are harmed by fear itself, and many may have come to their fate while dreading fate.” —SENECA, OEDIPUS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6wgqw167dy74hpmw5kdd65)) - “There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant, if foiled, none more insane—since it’s not driven back by weariness even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary it turns its teeth on itself.” —SENECA, ON ANGER ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6wncwwt4dmym83bh8zq6f6)) - “Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these things?” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6wqc1jv0k1mw27pg2s9v95)) - “Whenever you get an impression of some pleasure, as with any impression, guard yourself from being carried away by it, let it await your action, give yourself a pause. After that, bring to mind both times, first when you have enjoyed the pleasure and later when you will regret it and hate yourself. Then compare to those the joy and satisfaction you’d feel for abstaining altogether. However, if a seemingly appropriate time arises to act on it, don’t be overcome by its comfort, pleasantness, and allure—but against all of this, how much better the consciousness of conquering it.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6wv383c60ttwz979w14p5t)) - “Clear your mind and get a hold on yourself and, as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting you, wake up and see that what’s there is just like those dreams.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6x23akbpc925dkf7mw40xt)) - “If someone asks you how to write your name, would you bark out each letter? And if they get angry, would you then return the anger? Wouldn’t you rather gently spell out each letter for them? So then, remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty . . . just methodically complete your task.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6x3cxktrpmja47r31jh0t6)) - “It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6x41s29n0nawq9qz9xd28h)) - “This is the true athlete—the person in rigorous training against false impressions. Remain firm, you who suffer, don’t be kidnapped by your impressions! The struggle is great, the task divine—to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6x4zc0jp6st49hsjyp1vn3)) - “Remember that it’s not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn’t matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it subjugates us to another . . . where our heart is set, there our impediment lies.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6xgc9x0bf7qe13n4jmevpw)) - “Cato practiced the kind of public speech capable of moving the masses, believing proper political philosophy takes care like any great city to maintain the warlike element. But he was never seen practicing in front of others, and no one ever heard him rehearse a speech. When he was told that people blamed him for his silence, he replied, ‘Better they not blame my life. I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.’” —PLUTARCH, CATO THE YOUNGER ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6xkgq69g1822mymj5gp3dw)) - “You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6xq4xh8gr38s52vedeby3w)) - “Keep in mind that it isn’t the one who has it in for you and takes a swipe that harms you, but rather the harm comes from your own belief about the abuse. So when someone arouses your anger, know that it’s really your own opinion fueling it. Instead, make it your first response not to be carried away by such impressions, for with time and distance self-mastery is more easily achieved.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6xr5eam9wsjmdb0npyxh24)) - “Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction. Then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend . . .” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jf6xspg3rt57fveyknnfdse4)) - Abraham Lincoln occasionally got fuming mad with a subordinate, one of his generals, even a friend. Rather than taking it out on that person directly, he’d write a long letter, outlining his case why they were wrong and what he wanted them to know. Then Lincoln would fold it up, put the letter in the desk drawer, and never send it. Many of these letters survive only by chance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jfjy4jfbtabkhjcvnfb7jc7w))