Discover the most popular and inspiring quotes and sayings on the topic of Stoics. Share them with your friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, and let the world be inspired by their powerful messages. Here are the Top 100 Stoics Quotes And Sayings by 90 Authors including Marcus Aurelius,Charles Caleb Colton,Andre Gide,Ralph Waldo Emerson,Marcus Tullius Cicero for you to enjoy and share.
the Stoics had always approved of participation in public life, and this stand struck a chord with the Roman aristocracy, whose code of values placed a premium on political and military activity.
A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.
Those [who] assiduously fabricate for themselves a self-conscious originality, and after having made a choice of certain practices, their principal preoccupation is never to depart from them, to remain for ever on their guard and allow themselves not a moment's relaxation.
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect.
They are eloquent who can speak low things acutely, and of great things with dignity, and of moderate things with temper.
Sphinxes without secrets.
How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have? THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question.
There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
Stern men with empires in their brains.
Damoclean, but these were people without pretense or affectation,
The true Epicurean cultivates the capacity to take pleasure in simple things, while those around him chase pleasure in more things.
The stoic contemplates fallen leaves; the epicure rakes them into a loveseat.
Anger is, in the Stoic analysis, caused by the violent collision of hope and reality. We
Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.
The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.
Epicurus ... whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.
People who dislike budging from their homes or walking beyond their own backyards
and they are always and everywhere in the majority
treat Herodotus' sort, fundamentally unconnected to anyone or anything, as freaks, fanatics, lunatics even.
It were well if there were fewer heroes; for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand; and their reason with their left.
They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.
Heroes abound at the dawn of civilizations, during pre-Homeric and Gothic epochs, when people, not having yet experienced spiritual torture, satisfy their thirst for renunciation through a derivative: heroism.
In ancient mythology," Langdon offered, "a hero in denial is the ultimate manifestation of hubris and pride. No man is more prideful than he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world.
They are Nietzsche's over-men, these primitive Albanians - something between kings and tigers.
Prefects. I had learned this one. Student council types, but with superpowers. They who must be obeyed.
They all shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had the strange cold breath of the ancient world : they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks - sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat.
O cowardly amd tyrannous race of monks, persecutors of the bard, and the gleemen, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit! ("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast")
Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.
The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.
In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads;
The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.
Our (the Stoic) motto, as you know, is live according to nature.
The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.
Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored,
Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings - stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility.
Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians ... lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.
Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.
A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.
Imitations of Horace. Of two evils I have chose the least.
Those people who used to say others that they are attitudinal, they themselves are..
Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.
With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.
Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.
A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success.
Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.
Fortes et strenuos etiam contra fortunam insistere, timidos et ignoros ad desperationem formidine properare - the brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair through fear alone
Envy of prosperity, confirmers of scourge, desperate of hope. They have a victim in every certain way, a mediator to every heart, and a tear in every complaint.
The worse things are, the more they play philosopher. The more obvious the nonsense, the profounder their thoughts. The more lawlessness there is, the more laws. The more widespread the chaos, the more insistent their love of symmetry.
In families well ordered, there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.
The virtuous mind themselves.
When chaste people need body or mind to resort to action or thought, they find steel in their muscles or knowledge in their intelligence. Theirs the diabolic vigor or the black magic of will power.
People that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think
' (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.
I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
A fortress against ideas and against the
Shuddering insidious shock of the theory-vendors
The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy
Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.
[Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.
It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers.
Poltroons, cowards, skulkers and dastards.
Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tamed creatures, whose great moral task is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within - for we are both, and to ignore this duality is to invite disaster.
For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius
By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery.
The few individuals who are capable of spontaneous and joyous effort stand out. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training.
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819]
They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment.
The Christian is not a Stoic. Neither does he flee into a fantasy world that denies the reality of suffering.
Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces.
Those have not lived who have not seen Rome.
Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.
Nature hath given not only to the highest, but also to the inferior, classes of the people of this nation, a boldness and confidence in speaking and answering, even in the presence of their princes and chieftains.
Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.
Those whose days are consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolties of fashion, unobservant of nature's lovelinessof demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.
There are moments in history when men who are not necessarily fools or cowards behave as if they felt themselves conscientious executors named to administer some general heritage of cowardice and folly...
The wisdom of the ancients.
Weak, tea-drinking, effeminate, ineffectual
masters of India, robbers of South Africa, bedevillers of all Europe.
Peasants are a rude lot, and hard: life has hardened their hearts, but they are thick and awkward only in appearance; you have to know them. No one is more sensitive to what gives man the right to call himself a man: good-heartedness, bravery and virile brotherhood.
The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which intimidatethe pale scholar.
Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest Monarchies his look
Drew audience and attention still as Night
Or Summers Noon-tide air while thus he spake.
Playfulness, humour and even a sense of the anarchic are companions of reverence because they insist on the proper proportion of the human presence in the light of the eternal.
Perhaps elements like tenacity and humility combine to form a heroic compound.
The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy.
There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity profound conceit;
As who should say, I am sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
People with no upper-body strength, who read poetry. These are my people.
It is true that snobisme may be urged against them; but it is at least snobisme in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider.
They were people who believed that mediocrity was safe.
A people among whom custom is altogether sovereign endures the despotism of the dead.
[The superstitious, "bound in to saucy doubts and fears," degenerate into cowards and "die many times before their deaths.
Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach.
[Heraclitus had] pride not in logical knowledge but rather in intuitive grasping of the truth.
The worst of sages is a visitor of princes; the best of princes is a visitor of sages.
Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely.
In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.
Those who see and observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they have headaches, indigestion, humors and passions, just like other people; every one of which in their turns determine their wills in defiance of their reason.
Thucydides had grasped that vital historical insight that groups of people behave differently and have different motivations from individual human beings, and that they often behave far more discreditably than individuals. He
What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
People who go out and try to be a rebel at night,
Try to make up for the fact that they settled in life.
Epicurus had rage and envy of Plato's superior style.
Traitors."
"People," Marsh said. "People who were just trying to do the best with what life gave them."
"Well, I'm just doing the same thing," Kelsier said. "And, fortunately, life gave me the ability to push men like them off the tops of buildings.
prone to fits of 'immoderate arrogance'.
Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves.
If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian| warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men - and cowards.
Only small men parade their learning, talk over their audience and air their superior knowledge. Only brutal men throw their strength about, and vain rich men display their wealth in ostentatious useless luxuries.
The Greeks were the first intellectualists. In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they came forward as the protagonists of the mind.
It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.