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

That’s what Stoicism is. It’s stretching. Training. To be better. To get better. To avoid one more mistake, to take one step closer toward that ideal. Not perfection, but progress—that’s what each of these lives was about.

“Don’t explain your philosophy,” Epictetus said, “embody it.”

Cherish them while we have them, but accept that they belong to us only in trust, that they can depart at any moment. Because they can. And so can we.

Progress is wonderful. Self-improvement is a worthy endeavor. But it should be done for its own sake—not for congratulations or recognition.

You can only lose what you have. You don’t control your possessions, so don’t ascribe more value to them than they deserve.

“Remember,” he said, “that it’s not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn’t matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it subjugates us to another. . . . Where our heart is set, there our impediment lies.”

Our opinions determine the reality we experience.

Epictetus believed that as powerless as humans were over their external conditions, they always retained the ability to choose how they responded.

“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious,” Epictetus said, yet we so easily hand our mind over to other people, letting them inside our heads or making us feel a certain way.