stoicism

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.

Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.

Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.

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.

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.

How do you defeat terrorism? Don__ be terrorized.

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

In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Being a stoic does not mean being a robot. Being a stoic means remaining calm both at the height of pleasure and the depths of misery.

My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them.

Progress daily in your own uncertainty. Live in awareness of the questions.

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.

I smile to catch the piranhas from swimming out of my mouth.

But Moominmamma was quite unperturbed. "Well, well!" she said, "it seems to me that our guests are having a very good time.""I hope so," replied Moominpappa. "Pass me a banana, please dear.

True affluence is not needing anything.