We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.

Plato proposed that our lives go wrong in large part because we almost never give ourselves time to think carefully and logically enough about our plans.

to teach people how to be calm and brave in the face of overwhelming anxiety and pain.

Then there are friendships that are really strategic acquaintances, where people take pleasure in each other’s company only in so far as they have hopes of taking advantage of it.

Anger is, in the Stoic analysis, caused by the violent collision of hope and reality.

What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other … You have a choice in life: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief … or as much displeasure as possible as the price for an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys …

The primary thing we need to learn is not just maths or spelling, but how to be good: we need to learn about courage, self-control, reasonableness, independence and calm.

down-to-earth

He observed that humans have many ‘higher’ needs that are in fact very sensible and good, and yet that currently lie outside of capitalist enterprise: among these, our need for education, for self-understanding, for beautiful cities and for rewarding social lives.