Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

the roles and duties unique to our individual daimon, or personal genius/calling; the roles and duties assigned to us by the chance of our social station (family and profession); the roles and duties that arise from decisions and commitments we have made.

You can and should be interested in everything, the Stoics taught, because you can and should learn wisdom from everything. The more you experience, the more you learn, and, paradoxically, the more humbled you are by the endless amounts of knowledge that remain in front of you.

The choices you made, the causes you served, the principles you adhered to in the face of adversity. They cared about what you did, not what you said.

There is no better definition of a Stoic: to have but not want, to enjoy without needing.

That Stoic idea of oikeiosis—that we share something and our interests are naturally connected to those of our fellow humans—was

In the real world, we miss. Sometimes by a lot. But we have to keep trying. The more we work on it the better we get. The more shots we take, the more times we’ll hit the target and the more good we’ll do.

We commit. We hold up what’s right as our target. We take action. But much happens after that—much of it not remotely up to us.

He was also the first to express the four virtues of Stoicism: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.

virtue was the path to happiness and from virtue came a better flow of life.