Atharva31/Quotes_Collection · Datasets at Hugging Face

Unnamed: 0 int64 0 7.68k	quote stringlengths 1 3.91k	tags stringclasses 3 values
7,533	“Most people are like all stomachs: they cannot remain satisfied for a long time.”	stoicism
7,363	“Sleep is often a form of escapism.”	stoicism
7,513	“Those who died quietly asleep are not less dead than those who were killed awake by bombs.”	stoicism
6,996	“Which of us does not admire what Lycurgus the Spartan did? A young citizen had put out his eye, and been handed over to him by the people to be punished at his own discretion. Lycurgus abstained from all vengeance, but on the contrary instructed and made a good man of him. Producing him in public in the theatre, he said to the astonished Spartans: "I received this young man at your hands full of violence and wanton insolence; I restore him to you in his right mind and fit to serve his country.”	stoicism
7,514	“We lose a significant portion of our lives attending ceremonies for people who have lost theirs.”	stoicism
7,502	“I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. [...] Truth lies open to everyone.”	stoicism
7,205	“There is no correlation between the degree to which you are confident that you are right and the chances of you not being wrong.”	stoicism
7,191	“Time and money are almost always saved to be wasted.”	stoicism
7,323	“Change is not always a bad thing: it sometimes takes the form of progress. And is not always a good thing: it sometimes takes the form of regress.”	stoicism
6,790	“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”	stoicism
7,323	“Change is not always a bad thing: it sometimes takes the form of progress. And is not always a good thing: it sometimes takes the form of regress.”	stoicism
7,166	“You cannot really not care about what others think about you, yet care about whether or not they know that you do not care about what they think about you.”	stoicism
7,394	“We sometimes learn, not from something, but from not having learned from it.”	stoicism
6,874	“Before concluding the discussion on Partridge’s connection to the Stoic tradition, I present what is probably the greatest proof Partridge was a Stoic: he suffered the public doom of one. Ironically, Partridge may have missed a powerful warning about his own fate within one of the key texts he used in his academies. A footnote within William Duncan’s translation of Cicero’s orations recalls the ill fortune of Quintus Aelius Tubero in the eyes of the people of Rome caused by his Stoic behavior at the funeral of Scipio Africanus: "[It was the same from the study of Tubero] Cicero here ridicules the doctrine of the Stoics, shows the absurdities into which it may betray a man and paints the ill consequences that often arise from it. [Quintus Aelius] Tubero, of whom he speaks here had professed himself a Stoic and resolved to regulate his conduct by the tenets of that sect. Accordingly, in an entertainment he gave the Roman people on occasion of the death of the great Scipio Africanus he made use of plain wooden beds, goat skin covers, and earthen dishes. But this ill-timed parsimony was so displeasing to the Roman people that when he afterwards stood for the prætorship they refused him their suffrages though a man of illustrious birth and the most distinguished virtue." Is there a passage more fitting for the legacy of Partridge and his Stoic behavior? Even when Partridge had built an ideal model for educating a complete virtue-driven citizen worthy of the Republic, few would find the lifestyle required appealing. Being a virtuous man with a sufficient plan for American education was not enough to guarantee his acceptance among the masses.”	stoicism
6,961	“Add nothing of your own from within, and that's an end of it.”	stoicism
6,786	“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”	stoicism
6,889	“...what will you do when you are dead? "My name will remain." Write it on a stone, and it will remain. But come, what remembrance of you will there be beyond Nicopolis? "But I shall wear a crown of gold." If you desire a crown at all, take a crown of roses and put it on, for it will be more elegant in appearance.”	stoicism
7,162	“Hunger is by far the best spice.”	stoicism
7,194	“Take it to mind, not to heart.”	stoicism
6,898	“The Stoic approach is the lighthouse that guides us amidst the tempest, leading us to the land of dreams crafted in the forge of the unyielding present.”	stoicism
6,899	“The act of focusing is not simply the mental equivalent of gazing intently at an object. It is a confluence, a harmonious marriage of mind, heart, and will, an alignment akin to a troupe of actors on a stage, each playing their part, but all moving in harmony towards the climax of the play. This is the essence of true focus.”	stoicism
7,341	“There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and how many problems it gives us.”	stoicism
7,329	“Nothing can affect a person’s mind if he chooses not to be affected by it.”	stoicism
6,798	“There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.”	stoicism
6,866	“Wir müssen uns weigern, die Karten, die uns ausgeteilt wurden, über unser Wohlbefinden entscheiden zu lassen.”	stoicism
6,779	“Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.”	stoicism
7,011	“Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path”	stoicism
7,595	“What would Heracles have been if he had said, "How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?" What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.”	stoicism
7,001	“There was an iron simplicty in the seer. He was like a monolith of logic standing against waves of angry nonsense.”	stoicism
7,558	“It takes courage to speak or react way slower than you think.”	stoicism
7,053	“The first sign of a settled mind is that it can stay in one place and spend time with itself.” – Seneca, Letter 2.1”	stoicism
7,484	“If you lose today every-day, you are lost every-day.”	stoicism
7,528	“An action is at least a billion times less difficult to choose than a reaction.”	stoicism
7,571	“At any given moment, it is a beautiful day in many parts of the world.”	stoicism
7,545	“It is impossible to trip and fall while walking slowly.”	stoicism
7,495	“Where you arrive does not matter as much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.”	stoicism
6,969	“You will only get one shot at today. You have only twenty-four hours with which to take it. And then it is gone and lost forever. Will you fully inhbit all of today? Will you call out, "I've got this," and do your very best to be your very best? What will you manage to make of today before it slips from you fingers and becomes the past? When someone asks you what you did yesterday, do you really want the answer to be "nothing"?”	stoicism
6,848	“We are good to others only because we think that that is, or will be, good for us.”	stoicism
7,624	“There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings - arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.”	stoicism
7,625	“These...xistential qualms you suffer, they just mean you're truly human. I aked how I might remedy them. "You don´t remedy them. You live thru them.”	stoicism
6,942	“There will come a day when i will be able to resist and control my emotions... And when that day comes, i will know that i truly made it.”	stoicism
7,236	“Unhappiness and the like often inspire us to perform random acts of unkindness.”	stoicism
7,350	“We prefer our way into things such as regret, unhappiness, and anxiety.”	stoicism
7,185	“Show by a cheerful look that you don't need the help or comfort of others. Standing up - not propped up.”	stoicism
7,218	“We all die having lived a full life, even those who die while they are being born.”	stoicism
6,856	“I examine my entire day and go back over what I have done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by. For why should I fear any consequence from my mistakes, when I am able to say, “See that you do not do it again—but now I forgive you.”	stoicism
6,870	“Nothing great is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is then the fruit of a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if I tell you.”	stoicism
6,777	“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.”	stoicism
7,614	“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.”	stoicism
6,969	“You will only get one shot at today. You have only twenty-four hours with which to take it. And then it is gone and lost forever. Will you fully inhbit all of today? Will you call out, "I've got this," and do your very best to be your very best? What will you manage to make of today before it slips from you fingers and becomes the past? When someone asks you what you did yesterday, do you really want the answer to be "nothing"?”	stoicism
7,274	“Growth is often the cause or the result of pain.”	stoicism
6,856	“I examine my entire day and go back over what I have done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by. For why should I fear any consequence from my mistakes, when I am able to say, “See that you do not do it again—but now I forgive you.”	stoicism
6,812	“In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.”	stoicism
7,154	“Hating our opponent benefits us. Underestimating them benefits them.”	stoicism
7,390	“Sometimes we are lucky to lose something or someone.”	stoicism
7,204	“The mind, unconquered by violent passions, is a citadel, for a man has no fortress more impregnable in which to find refuge and remain safe forever.”	stoicism
7,177	“To make life very pleasurable, expect nothing. To make it even more pleasurable than that, expect nothing … but the worst.”	stoicism
7,252	“The most fruitful breaks are often those we are or were forced to take by life.”	stoicism
7,433	“Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law. And if any instance of pain or pleasure, glory or disgrace, be set before you, remember that now is the combat, now the Olympiad comes on, nor can it be put off; and that by one failure and defeat honor may be lost or—won.”	stoicism
6,786	“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”	stoicism
7,414	“[W]hatever happens is never as serious as rumour makes it out to be.”	stoicism
6,917	“Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not.”	stoicism
7,046	“Things we wouldn't be willing to pay for if it meant giving up our house for them, or some pleasant or productive estate, we are quite ready to obtain at the cost of anxiety, of danger, of losing our freedom, our decency, our time.”	stoicism
7,001	“There was an iron simplicty in the seer. He was like a monolith of logic standing against waves of angry nonsense.”	stoicism
7,595	“What would Heracles have been if he had said, "How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?" What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.”	stoicism
7,135	“We do things for others for ourselves.”	stoicism
6,997	“If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher, nor suffer others to call you so. Say rather: He is in error; for my desires, my impulses are unaltered. I give in my adhesion to what I did before; nor has my mode of dealing with the things of sense undergone any change.”	stoicism
7,420	“[T]he man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody's lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about.”	stoicism
7,205	“There is no correlation between the degree to which you are confident that you are right and the chances of you not being wrong.”	stoicism
7,168	“We gain the highest degree of freedom when we lose the desire to live, and gain the second highest degree when we lose the desire to live as long as we possibly can.”	stoicism
6,980	“You are scared of dying - and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?”	stoicism
7,160	“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much… The life we receive is not short but we make it so”	stoicism
7,268	“Be someone who is cool under pressure. Value serenity instead of outrage. It seems that our culture is moving in the wrong direction here. If you are blessed enough to not be on social media, you might be surprised to learn that the angriest, most passionate public figures are rewarded with the most clicks and biggest audiences. Our culture has begun to confuse passion with substance, reward the loudest and angriest voices, and thus incentivize behavior wholly at odds with Stoic wisdom. The number of decibels your voice hits as you scream about how right you are is not necessarily an indicator of how much sense you are making. As a society founded on reason and Western Enlightenment ideals, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We have to collectively stop allowing emotion and passion to pass for reason and factual debate.”	stoicism
7,309	“We subconsciously wish that all of the things we hate but our enemies love were harmful.”	stoicism
7,332	“Zu den herrlichsten Schätzen, die durch die Bemühungen anderer aus der Finsternis ans Licht gezogen sind, werden wir geführt; kein Zeitalter ist uns verschlossen, zu allen haben wir Zutritt [...] Die Zusammenfassung aller Zeiten macht ihm [/ihr] das Leben lang.”	stoicism
7,260	“Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are. An emotional response is a human response, I get it. I too have succumbed to emotion, more often than I care to admit. But it is also a futile response. It isn’t an objectively beneficial response. This is central to Stoicism.”	stoicism
7,211	“Having to make a difficult or important decision is sometimes more agonizing than not having a choice.”	stoicism
7,030	“... we find a complete contradiction in our wishing to live without suffering, a contradiction that is therefore implied by the frequently used phrase “blessed life.” This will certainly be clear to the person who has fully grasped my discussion that follows. This contradiction is revealed in this ethic of pure reason itself by the fact that the Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life (for this is what his ethics always remains). This is like the costly phial of poison to be found among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of oriental despots, and is for the case where the sufferings of the body, incapable of being philosophized away by any principles and syllogisms, are paramount and incurable. Thus its sole purpose, namely blessedness, is frustrated, and nothing remains as a means of escape from pain except death. But then death must be taken with unconcern, just as is any other medicine. Here a marked contrast is evident between the Stoic ethics and all those other ethical systems mentioned above. These ethical systems make virtue directly and in itself the aim and object, even with the most grievous sufferings, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering. But not one of them knew how to express the true reason for rejecting suicide, but they laboriously collected fictitious arguments of every kind. This true reason will appear in the fourth book in connexion with our discussion. But the above-mentioned contrast reveals and confirms just that essential difference to be found in the fundamental principle between the Stoa, really only a special form of eudaemonism, and the doctrines just mentioned, although both often agree in their results, and are apparently related. But the above-mentioned inner contradiction, with which the Stoic ethics is affected even in its fundamental idea, further shows itself in the fact that its ideal, the Stoic sage as represented by this ethical system, could never obtain life or inner poetical truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure with whom one can do nothing. He himself does not know where to go with his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of mankind, and do not enable us to arrive at any perceptive representation thereof. Compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world and voluntary penitents, who are revealed to us, and are actually produced, by the wisdom of India; how different even the Saviour of Christianity, that excellent form full of the depth of life, of the greatest poetical truth and highest significance, who stands before us with perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.”	stoicism
7,542	“The size of your problem is in your mind.”	stoicism
7,119	“Most people want more than they have without having made the most of what they have.”	stoicism
7,121	“If being better is the surest way of feeling better, it must be better than feeling better.”	stoicism
7,289	“...but if you think that only which is your own to be your own, and if you think that what is another’s, as it really is, belongs to another, no man will ever compel you, no man will hinder you, you will never blame any man, you will accuse no man, you will do nothing involuntarily (against your will), no man will harm you, you will have no enemy, for you will not suffer any harm.”	stoicism
7,089	“Conformity eats away individuality.”	stoicism
6,907	“One will never be able to control all things that concern an endeavor, but the magic is in riding the wave.”	stoicism
7,319	“The universe is change, and life mere opinion.”	stoicism
7,392	“Life is 99 percent attitude. Yet for the majority of people, it is the remaining one percent that dominates 99 percent of their life.”	stoicism
7,137	“What is happening is life’s way of telling us what should be happening.”	stoicism
6,989	“Don’t take things too personally. Critique, failures, unwarranted advice - take it to mind, not to heart. What you hear out of the mouths of others are opinions and perspectives. It’s often worth listening to opinions and perspectives, but it’s not a requisite that you take them on board.”	stoicism
7,106	“Άριστος τρόπος τοῦ ἀμύνεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι”	stoicism
6,992	“I am acting on behalf of later generations. I am writing down a few things that may be of use to them.”	stoicism
7,417	“Many are the things that have caused terror during the night and been turned into matters of laughter with the coming of daylight.”	stoicism
7,537	“We are more in control of how much we know than we are of how much we have.”	stoicism
7,129	“Life cannot, not even for a millisecond, remain exactly how it is.”	stoicism
7,098	“We are food even before we are dead.”	stoicism
7,232	“A thing named, misnamed, unnamed, or renamed is still itself.”	stoicism
7,330	“We have, not problems, but negative attitudes towards some situations (towards which some people have or would have positive attitudes).”	stoicism
7,573	“Judgments are the only possible cause of unhappiness and happiness.”	stoicism
7,151	“Some real kings are drama queens.”	stoicism
7,605	“Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely rationally according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences or circumstances, are in our power, to be capable of always remaining consistent we must take as our object only the maxims, not the consequences and circumstances, and thus the doctrine of virtue is again introduced.” —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 89”	stoicism
7,359	“Seeing your loved one asleep is a great opportunity to practice seeing them dead.”	stoicism

7,533

“Most people are like all stomachs: they cannot remain satisfied for a long time.”

stoicism

7,363

“Sleep is often a form of escapism.”

stoicism

7,513

“Those who died quietly asleep are not less dead than those who were killed awake by bombs.”

stoicism

6,996

“Which of us does not admire what Lycurgus the Spartan did? A young citizen had put out his eye, and been handed over to him by the people to be punished at his own discretion. Lycurgus abstained from all vengeance, but on the contrary instructed and made a good man of him. Producing him in public in the theatre, he said to the astonished Spartans: "I received this young man at your hands full of violence and wanton insolence; I restore him to you in his right mind and fit to serve his country.”

stoicism

7,514

“We lose a significant portion of our lives attending ceremonies for people who have lost theirs.”

stoicism

7,502

“I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. [...] Truth lies open to everyone.”

stoicism

7,205

“There is no correlation between the degree to which you are confident that you are right and the chances of you not being wrong.”

stoicism

7,191

“Time and money are almost always saved to be wasted.”

stoicism

7,323

“Change is not always a bad thing: it sometimes takes the form of progress. And is not always a good thing: it sometimes takes the form of regress.”

stoicism

6,790

“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

stoicism

7,323

“Change is not always a bad thing: it sometimes takes the form of progress. And is not always a good thing: it sometimes takes the form of regress.”

stoicism

7,166

“You cannot really not care about what others think about you, yet care about whether or not they know that you do not care about what they think about you.”

stoicism

7,394

“We sometimes learn, not from something, but from not having learned from it.”

stoicism

6,874

“Before concluding the discussion on Partridge’s connection to the Stoic tradition, I present what is probably the greatest proof Partridge was a Stoic: he suffered the public doom of one. Ironically, Partridge may have missed a powerful warning about his own fate within one of the key texts he used in his academies. A footnote within William Duncan’s translation of Cicero’s orations recalls the ill fortune of Quintus Aelius Tubero in the eyes of the people of Rome caused by his Stoic behavior at the funeral of Scipio Africanus: "[It was the same from the study of Tubero] Cicero here ridicules the doctrine of the Stoics, shows the absurdities into which it may betray a man and paints the ill consequences that often arise from it. [Quintus Aelius] Tubero, of whom he speaks here had professed himself a Stoic and resolved to regulate his conduct by the tenets of that sect. Accordingly, in an entertainment he gave the Roman people on occasion of the death of the great Scipio Africanus he made use of plain wooden beds, goat skin covers, and earthen dishes. But this ill-timed parsimony was so displeasing to the Roman people that when he afterwards stood for the prætorship they refused him their suffrages though a man of illustrious birth and the most distinguished virtue." Is there a passage more fitting for the legacy of Partridge and his Stoic behavior? Even when Partridge had built an ideal model for educating a complete virtue-driven citizen worthy of the Republic, few would find the lifestyle required appealing. Being a virtuous man with a sufficient plan for American education was not enough to guarantee his acceptance among the masses.”

stoicism

6,961

“Add nothing of your own from within, and that's an end of it.”

stoicism

6,786

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”

stoicism

6,889

“...what will you do when you are dead? "My name will remain." Write it on a stone, and it will remain. But come, what remembrance of you will there be beyond Nicopolis? "But I shall wear a crown of gold." If you desire a crown at all, take a crown of roses and put it on, for it will be more elegant in appearance.”

stoicism

7,162

“Hunger is by far the best spice.”

stoicism

7,194

“Take it to mind, not to heart.”

stoicism

6,898

“The Stoic approach is the lighthouse that guides us amidst the tempest, leading us to the land of dreams crafted in the forge of the unyielding present.”

stoicism

6,899

“The act of focusing is not simply the mental equivalent of gazing intently at an object. It is a confluence, a harmonious marriage of mind, heart, and will, an alignment akin to a troupe of actors on a stage, each playing their part, but all moving in harmony towards the climax of the play. This is the essence of true focus.”

stoicism

7,341

“There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and how many problems it gives us.”

stoicism

7,329

“Nothing can affect a person’s mind if he chooses not to be affected by it.”

stoicism

6,798

“There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.”

stoicism

6,866

“Wir müssen uns weigern, die Karten, die uns ausgeteilt wurden, über unser Wohlbefinden entscheiden zu lassen.”

stoicism

6,779

“Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.”

stoicism

7,011

“Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path”

stoicism

7,595

“What would Heracles have been if he had said, "How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?" What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.”

stoicism

7,001

“There was an iron simplicty in the seer. He was like a monolith of logic standing against waves of angry nonsense.”

stoicism

7,558

“It takes courage to speak or react way slower than you think.”

stoicism

7,053

“The first sign of a settled mind is that it can stay in one place and spend time with itself.” – Seneca, Letter 2.1”

stoicism

7,484

“If you lose today every-day, you are lost every-day.”

stoicism

7,528

“An action is at least a billion times less difficult to choose than a reaction.”

stoicism

7,571

“At any given moment, it is a beautiful day in many parts of the world.”

stoicism

7,545

“It is impossible to trip and fall while walking slowly.”

stoicism

7,495

“Where you arrive does not matter as much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.”

stoicism

6,969

“You will only get one shot at today. You have only twenty-four hours with which to take it. And then it is gone and lost forever. Will you fully inhbit all of today? Will you call out, "I've got this," and do your very best to be your very best? What will you manage to make of today before it slips from you fingers and becomes the past? When someone asks you what you did yesterday, do you really want the answer to be "nothing"?”

stoicism

6,848

“We are good to others only because we think that that is, or will be, good for us.”

stoicism

7,624

“There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings - arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.”

stoicism

7,625

“These...xistential qualms you suffer, they just mean you're truly human. I aked how I might remedy them. "You don´t remedy them. You live thru them.”

stoicism

6,942

“There will come a day when i will be able to resist and control my emotions... And when that day comes, i will know that i truly made it.”

stoicism

7,236

“Unhappiness and the like often inspire us to perform random acts of unkindness.”

stoicism

7,350

“We prefer our way into things such as regret, unhappiness, and anxiety.”

stoicism

7,185

“Show by a cheerful look that you don't need the help or comfort of others. Standing up - not propped up.”

stoicism

7,218

“We all die having lived a full life, even those who die while they are being born.”

stoicism

6,856

“I examine my entire day and go back over what I have done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by. For why should I fear any consequence from my mistakes, when I am able to say, “See that you do not do it again—but now I forgive you.”

stoicism

6,870

“Nothing great is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is then the fruit of a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if I tell you.”

stoicism

6,777

“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.”

stoicism

7,614

“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.”

stoicism

6,969

“You will only get one shot at today. You have only twenty-four hours with which to take it. And then it is gone and lost forever. Will you fully inhbit all of today? Will you call out, "I've got this," and do your very best to be your very best? What will you manage to make of today before it slips from you fingers and becomes the past? When someone asks you what you did yesterday, do you really want the answer to be "nothing"?”

stoicism

7,274

“Growth is often the cause or the result of pain.”

stoicism

6,856

“I examine my entire day and go back over what I have done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by. For why should I fear any consequence from my mistakes, when I am able to say, “See that you do not do it again—but now I forgive you.”

stoicism

6,812

“In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.”

stoicism

7,154

“Hating our opponent benefits us. Underestimating them benefits them.”

stoicism

7,390

“Sometimes we are lucky to lose something or someone.”

stoicism

7,204

“The mind, unconquered by violent passions, is a citadel, for a man has no fortress more impregnable in which to find refuge and remain safe forever.”

stoicism

7,177

“To make life very pleasurable, expect nothing. To make it even more pleasurable than that, expect nothing … but the worst.”

stoicism

7,252

“The most fruitful breaks are often those we are or were forced to take by life.”

stoicism

7,433

“Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law. And if any instance of pain or pleasure, glory or disgrace, be set before you, remember that now is the combat, now the Olympiad comes on, nor can it be put off; and that by one failure and defeat honor may be lost or—won.”

stoicism

6,786

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”

stoicism

7,414

“[W]hatever happens is never as serious as rumour makes it out to be.”

stoicism

6,917

“Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not.”

stoicism

7,046

“Things we wouldn't be willing to pay for if it meant giving up our house for them, or some pleasant or productive estate, we are quite ready to obtain at the cost of anxiety, of danger, of losing our freedom, our decency, our time.”

stoicism

7,001

“There was an iron simplicty in the seer. He was like a monolith of logic standing against waves of angry nonsense.”

stoicism

7,595

“What would Heracles have been if he had said, "How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?" What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.”

stoicism

7,135

“We do things for others for ourselves.”

stoicism

6,997

“If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher, nor suffer others to call you so. Say rather: He is in error; for my desires, my impulses are unaltered. I give in my adhesion to what I did before; nor has my mode of dealing with the things of sense undergone any change.”

stoicism

7,420

“[T]he man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody's lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about.”

stoicism

7,205

“There is no correlation between the degree to which you are confident that you are right and the chances of you not being wrong.”

stoicism

7,168

“We gain the highest degree of freedom when we lose the desire to live, and gain the second highest degree when we lose the desire to live as long as we possibly can.”

stoicism

6,980

“You are scared of dying - and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?”

stoicism

7,160

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much… The life we receive is not short but we make it so”

stoicism

7,268

“Be someone who is cool under pressure. Value serenity instead of outrage. It seems that our culture is moving in the wrong direction here. If you are blessed enough to not be on social media, you might be surprised to learn that the angriest, most passionate public figures are rewarded with the most clicks and biggest audiences. Our culture has begun to confuse passion with substance, reward the loudest and angriest voices, and thus incentivize behavior wholly at odds with Stoic wisdom. The number of decibels your voice hits as you scream about how right you are is not necessarily an indicator of how much sense you are making. As a society founded on reason and Western Enlightenment ideals, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We have to collectively stop allowing emotion and passion to pass for reason and factual debate.”

stoicism

7,309

“We subconsciously wish that all of the things we hate but our enemies love were harmful.”

stoicism

7,332

“Zu den herrlichsten Schätzen, die durch die Bemühungen anderer aus der Finsternis ans Licht gezogen sind, werden wir geführt; kein Zeitalter ist uns verschlossen, zu allen haben wir Zutritt [...] Die Zusammenfassung aller Zeiten macht ihm [/ihr] das Leben lang.”

stoicism

7,260

“Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are. An emotional response is a human response, I get it. I too have succumbed to emotion, more often than I care to admit. But it is also a futile response. It isn’t an objectively beneficial response. This is central to Stoicism.”

stoicism

7,211

“Having to make a difficult or important decision is sometimes more agonizing than not having a choice.”

stoicism

7,030

“... we find a complete contradiction in our wishing to live without suffering, a contradiction that is therefore implied by the frequently used phrase “blessed life.” This will certainly be clear to the person who has fully grasped my discussion that follows. This contradiction is revealed in this ethic of pure reason itself by the fact that the Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life (for this is what his ethics always remains). This is like the costly phial of poison to be found among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of oriental despots, and is for the case where the sufferings of the body, incapable of being philosophized away by any principles and syllogisms, are paramount and incurable. Thus its sole purpose, namely blessedness, is frustrated, and nothing remains as a means of escape from pain except death. But then death must be taken with unconcern, just as is any other medicine. Here a marked contrast is evident between the Stoic ethics and all those other ethical systems mentioned above. These ethical systems make virtue directly and in itself the aim and object, even with the most grievous sufferings, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering. But not one of them knew how to express the true reason for rejecting suicide, but they laboriously collected fictitious arguments of every kind. This true reason will appear in the fourth book in connexion with our discussion. But the above-mentioned contrast reveals and confirms just that essential difference to be found in the fundamental principle between the Stoa, really only a special form of eudaemonism, and the doctrines just mentioned, although both often agree in their results, and are apparently related. But the above-mentioned inner contradiction, with which the Stoic ethics is affected even in its fundamental idea, further shows itself in the fact that its ideal, the Stoic sage as represented by this ethical system, could never obtain life or inner poetical truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure with whom one can do nothing. He himself does not know where to go with his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of mankind, and do not enable us to arrive at any perceptive representation thereof. Compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world and voluntary penitents, who are revealed to us, and are actually produced, by the wisdom of India; how different even the Saviour of Christianity, that excellent form full of the depth of life, of the greatest poetical truth and highest significance, who stands before us with perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.”

stoicism

7,542

“The size of your problem is in your mind.”

stoicism

7,119

“Most people want more than they have without having made the most of what they have.”

stoicism

7,121

“If being better is the surest way of feeling better, it must be better than feeling better.”

stoicism

7,289

“...but if you think that only which is your own to be your own, and if you think that what is another’s, as it really is, belongs to another, no man will ever compel you, no man will hinder you, you will never blame any man, you will accuse no man, you will do nothing involuntarily (against your will), no man will harm you, you will have no enemy, for you will not suffer any harm.”

stoicism

7,089

“Conformity eats away individuality.”

stoicism

6,907

“One will never be able to control all things that concern an endeavor, but the magic is in riding the wave.”

stoicism

7,319

“The universe is change, and life mere opinion.”

stoicism

7,392

“Life is 99 percent attitude. Yet for the majority of people, it is the remaining one percent that dominates 99 percent of their life.”

stoicism

7,137

“What is happening is life’s way of telling us what should be happening.”

stoicism

6,989

“Don’t take things too personally. Critique, failures, unwarranted advice - take it to mind, not to heart. What you hear out of the mouths of others are opinions and perspectives. It’s often worth listening to opinions and perspectives, but it’s not a requisite that you take them on board.”

stoicism

7,106

“Άριστος τρόπος τοῦ ἀμύνεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι”

stoicism

6,992

“I am acting on behalf of later generations. I am writing down a few things that may be of use to them.”

stoicism

7,417

“Many are the things that have caused terror during the night and been turned into matters of laughter with the coming of daylight.”

stoicism

7,537

“We are more in control of how much we know than we are of how much we have.”

stoicism

7,129

“Life cannot, not even for a millisecond, remain exactly how it is.”

stoicism

7,098

“We are food even before we are dead.”

stoicism

7,232

“A thing named, misnamed, unnamed, or renamed is still itself.”

stoicism

7,330

“We have, not problems, but negative attitudes towards some situations (towards which some people have or would have positive attitudes).”

stoicism

7,573

“Judgments are the only possible cause of unhappiness and happiness.”

stoicism

7,151

“Some real kings are drama queens.”

stoicism

7,605

“Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely *rationally* according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences or circumstances, are in our power, to be capable of always remaining consistent we must take as our object only the maxims, not the consequences and circumstances, and thus the doctrine of virtue is again introduced.” —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 89”

stoicism

7,359

“Seeing your loved one asleep is a great opportunity to practice seeing them dead.”

stoicism