The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“What’s left to be prized? This, I think—to limit our action or inaction to only what’s in keeping with the needs of our own preparation . . . it’s what the exertions of education and teaching are all about—here is the thing to be prized! If you hold this firmly, you’ll stop trying to get yourself all the other things. . . . If you don’t, you won’t

Put more simply: think before you act. Ask: Who is in control here? What principles are guiding me?

Locate that yearning for more, better, someday and see it for what it is: the enemy of your contentment.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS

Indifference is solid middle ground.

The samurai swordsman Musashi made a distinction between our “perceiving eye” and our “observing eye.” The observing eye sees what is. The perceiving eye sees what things supposedly mean. Which one do you think causes us the most anguish?

Why ponder the existence of nuisance?

duty has assigned you an important cause. Trivial details like the rise and fall of your position say nothing about you as a person. Only your behavior—as Cato’s did—will.