Stoics Quotes

Death devours not only those who have been cooked by old age, it also feasts on those who are half-cooked and even those who are raw.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Mokokoma Mokhonoana Adage Adages Africa African Aphorism Aphorisms Axiom Axioms Birth Bolt Bolt Down Born Child Childfree Childhood Childless Children Consolation Console Consume Consuming Cook Cooked Cooking Dead Death Deep Devour Devouring Dictum Dictums Dying Eat Eat Up Eating Elder Elderly Epigram Epigrams Feast Feast On Feasting Feasts Funny Gnome Gnomes Gobble Gobble Down Gobble Up Gulp Gulp Down Guzzle Half Cooked Humor Humorous Humour Hunger Hungry Immortal Immortality Insightful Kid Kids Made Me Think Make You Think Maxim Maxims Mortal Mortality Newborn Newborns Obituary Old Old Age Philosopher Profound Proverb Proverbs Provoke Thought Quotation Quotations Quote Quote Of The Day Quotes Raw Retire Retirement Satire Satirical Satirist Satirists Saying Sayings Selfish Selfishness Shovel Down South Africa South African Stoic Stoicism Stoics Thought Provoking Thoughtful Wolf Wolf Down Young

Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We all have problems. Or rather, everyone has at least one thing that they regard as a problem.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower.

~ Epictetus

Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For the Stoics, then, our judgments about the world are all that we can control, but also all that we need to control in order to be happy; tranquility results from replacing our irrational judgments with rational ones

~ Oliver Burkeman

And here lies the essential difference between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.

~ Oliver Burkeman

But if God and immortality be repudiated, what is left? That is the question usually thrown at the atheist's head. The orthodox believer likes to think that nothing is left. That, however, is because he has only been accustomed to think in terms of his orthodoxy. In point of fact, a great deal is left.That is immediately obvious from the fact that many men and women have led active, or self-sacrificing, or noble, or devoted lives without any belief in God or immortality. Buddhism in its uncorrupted form has no such belief; nor did the great nineteenth-century agnostics; nor do the orthodox Russian Communists; nor did the Stoics. Of course, the unbelievers have often been guilty of selfish or wicked actions; but so have the believers. And in any case that is not the fundamental point. The point: is that without these beliefs men and women may yet possess the mainspring of full and purposive living, and just as strong a sense that existence can be worth while as is possible to the most devout believers.

~ Julian Huxley

Well, that's what I still think, but I am in a rut at work--I hate my job,' I said, allowing my emotions to find words.

~ Luke Lively

A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.

~ Jenny Offill

In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that great Excalibur which they had forged with infinite pains and skill—the method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty 'two-handed engine at the door' of the theologian is warranted to make a speedy end of any and every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, 'poetically' or, 'in a spiritual sense,' the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires they should mean.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Stoics quote from classy quote