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

veracity.

isn’t that what books are? A way to gain wisdom from those no longer with us?

“nothing is needed by the fool for he does not understand how to use anything but he is in want of everything.” There is no better definition of a Stoic: to have but not want, to enjoy without needing.

inasmuch as the pleasure associated with drinking and eating creates in us a desire for more food and drink.”

At some point, though, every traveler must come home,

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.

sympatheia, built on Zeno’s belief that we all belong to one common community, which encourages us to meditate on the interconnectedness of all persons and our shared citizenship in the cosmos.

Philosophy for the previous several centuries had been primarily a classroom exercise. It had been about the pursuit of the good life—about truth and meaning—but for the student first and foremost. Almost all the philosophical schools—Cynic, Platonist, Aristotelian, Epicurean, even Stoicism—had tuned out the real world of social and political life.

“If you have a garden and a library,” Cicero would write in a letter to a friend as they discussed Chrysippus and Diodotus, “you have everything you need.” Clearly there was a part of him that didn’t fully believe that, that could not be content with the simple or the reflective life. Like many people, he seemed to believe that he needed wealth and