“First practice not letting people know who you are— keep your philosophy to yourself for a bit. In just the manner that fruit is produced— the seed buried for a season, hidden, growing gradually so it may come to full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stalk is fully developed, it will never ripen. . . . That is the kind of plant you are, displaying fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you.”—EPICTETUS, “Whenever you suffer pain, keep in mind that it’s nothing to be ashamed of and that it can’t degrade your guiding intelligence, nor keep it from acting rationally and for the common good. And in most cases you should be helped by the saying of Epicurus, that pain is never unbearable or unending, so you can remember these limits and not add to them in your imagination. Remember too that many common annoyances are pain in disguise, such as sleepiness, fever and loss of appetite. When they start to get you down, tell yourself you are giving in to pain.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “When forced, as it seems, by circumstances into utter confusion, get a hold of yourself quickly. Don’t be locked out of the rhythm any longer than necessary. You’ll be able to keep the beat if you are constantly returning to it.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Difficulties show a person’s character. So when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer. Why? Becoming an Olympian takes sweat! I think no one has a better challenge than yours, if only you would use it like an athlete would that younger sparring partner.”—EPICTETUS, “Being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster, and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person’s pain. For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent out in advance to all things and we shouldn’t just consider the normal course of things, but what could actually happen. For is there anything in life that Fortune won’t knock off its high horse if it pleases her?”—SENECA, “It’s in keeping with Nature to show our friends affection and to celebrate their advancement, as if it were our very own. For if we don’t do this, virtue, which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us.”—SENECA, “Yes, getting your wish would have been so nice. But isn’t that exactly why pleasure trips us up? Instead, see if these things might be even nicer— a great soul, freedom, honesty, kindness, saintliness. For there is nothing so pleasing as wisdom itself, when you consider how sure-footed and effortless the works of understanding and knowledge are.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to ‘give it to you straight.’ What are you up to, dear friend? It shouldn’t need your announcement, but be readily seen, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes— just as the beloved sees it all in the lover’s glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat— you know when they are in the room with you.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “The best way to avenge yourself is to not be like that.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?”—SENECA, “You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere— not in logic, nor in wealth, fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. How is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage and freedom, and nothing evil except what destroys these things.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “People aren’t in awe of your sharp mind? So be it. But you have many other qualities you can’t claim to have been deprived of at birth. Display then those qualities in your own power: honesty, dignity, endurance, chastity, contentment, frugality, kindness, freedom, persistence, avoiding gossip, and magnanimity.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Aren’t you ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnants of your life and to dedicate to wisdom only that time can’t be directed to business?”—SENECA, ON THEBREVITY OFLIFE, 3.5b I n one of his letters, Seneca tells a story about Alexander the Great. Apparently as Alexander was conquering the world, certain countries would offer him pieces of their territory in hopes that he’d leave them alone in exchange. Alexander would tell them, writes Seneca, that he hadn’t come all the way to Asia to accept whatever they would give him, but instead they were going to have to accept whatever he chose to leave them. According to Seneca, we should treat philosophy the same way in our lives. Philosophy shouldn’t have to accept what time or energy is left over from other occupations but instead we should graciously make time for those other pursuits only once our study is finished. If real self-improvement is what we’re after, why do we leave our reading until those few minutes before we shut off the lights and go to bed? Why do we block off eight to ten hours in the middle of the day to be at the office or to go to meetings but block out no time for thinking about the big questions? The average person somehow manages to squeeze in twentyeight hours of television per week— but ask them if they had time to study philosophy, and they will probably tell you they’re too busy. “If the breaking day sees someone proud, The ending day sees them brought low. No one should put too much trust in triumph, No one should give up hope of trials improving. Clotho mixes one with the other and stops Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around. No one has had so much divine favor That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow. God keeps our lives hurtling on, Spinning in a whirlwind.” No amount of prosperity, no amount of difficulty, is certain or forever. A triumph becomes a trial, a trial becomes a triumph. Life can change in an instant. Remember, today, how often it does. “Don’t allow yourself to be heard any longer griping about public life, not even with your own ears!” “Hecato says, ‘cease to hope and you will cease to fear.’ . . . The primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to present circumstances we send out thoughts too far ahead.”—SENECA, “Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Don’t behave as if you are destined to live forever. What’s fated hangs over you. As long as you live and while you can, become good now.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives— worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”—SENECA, ON THEBREVITY OFLIFE, “Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share. Think about the expanse of time and how brief— almost momentary— the part marked for you. Think of the workings of fate and how infinitesimal your role.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Many times an old man has no other evidence besides his age to prove he has lived a long time.”—SENECA, ONTRANQUILITY OF MIND, “For it’s disgraceful for an old person, or one in sight of old age, to have only the knowledge carried in their notebooks. Zeno said this . . . what do you say? Cleanthes said that . . . what do you say? How long will you be compelled by the claims of another? Take charge and stake your own claim— something posterity will carry in its notebook.”—SENECA, “You know what wine and liqueur tastes like. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand bottles pass through your bladder— you are nothing more than a filter.”—SENECA, “Everything lasts for a day, the one who remembers and the remembered.”—MARCUS AURELIUS, “To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.”—SENECA, HERCULESOETAEUS “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