We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.” “Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own.” “The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. “Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?”—MARCUSAURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 12.19 “I will keep constant watch over myself and— most usefully— will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil— that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.” “Don’t return to philosophy as a task-master, but as patients seek out relief in a treatment of sore eyes, or a dressing for a burn, or from an ointment. Regarding it this way, you’ll obey reason without putting it on display and rest easy in its care.” “You cry, I’m suffering severe pain! Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way?” “Whenever you get an impression of some pleasure, as with any impression, guard yourself from being carried away by it, let it await your action, give yourself a pause. After that, bring to mind both times, first when you have enjoyed the pleasure and later when you will regret it and hate yourself. Then compare to those the joy and satisfaction you’d feel for abstaining altogether. However, if a seemingly appropriate time arises to act on it, don’t be overcome by its comfort, pleasantness, and allure— but against all of this, how much better the consciousness of conquering it.” “The soul is like a bowl of water, and our impressions are like the ray of light falling upon the water. When the water is troubled, it appears that the light itself is moved too, but it isn’t. So, when a person loses their composure it isn’t their skills and virtues that are troubled, but the spirit in which they exist, and when that spirit calms down so do those things.”—EPICTETUS, “You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” “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.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, when you can, at any moment, find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy retreat than in your own soul— especially if on close inspection it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well-ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat and be renewed.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one.” “Eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children, get politically active— suffer abuse, bear with a headstrong brother, father, son, neighbor, or companion. Show us these things so we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers.”—EPICTETUS, . freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.”—EPICTETUS, “Chasing what can’t be done is madness. But the base person is unable to do anything else.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.17 Adog that’s allowed to chase cars will chase cars. A child who is never given any boundaries will become spoiled. An investor without discipline is not an investor— he’s a gambler. A mind that isn’t in control of itself, that doesn’t understand its power to regulate itself, will be jerked around by external events and unquestioned impulses. That can’t be how you’d like tomorrow to go. So you must be aware of that. You must put in place training and habits now to replace ignorance and ill discipline. Only then will you begin to behave and act differently. Only then will you stop seeking the impossible, the shortsighted, and the unnecessary. “From the very beginning, make it your practice to say to every harsh impression, ‘you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be.’ Next, examine and test it by the rules you possess, the first and greatest of which is this— whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control, and if the latter, be prepared to respond, ‘It is nothing to me.’”—EPICTETUS, NO HARM, NO FOUL “Do away with the opinion I am harmed, and the harm is cast away too. Do away with being harmed, and harm disappears.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, “Turn it inside out and see what it is like— what it becomes like when old, sick, or prostituting itself. How short-lived the praiser and praised, the one who remembers and the remembered. Remembered in some corner of these parts, and even there not in the same way by all, or even by one. And the whole earth is but a mere speck.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “For philosophy doesn’t consist in outward display, but in taking heed to what is needed and being mindful of it.”—MUSONIUSRUFUS, “Those who receive the bare theories immediately want to spew them, as an upset stomach does its food. First digest your theories and you won’t throw them up. Otherwise they will be raw, spoiled, and not nourishing. After you’ve digested them, show us the changes in your reasoned choices, just like the shoulders of gymnasts display their diet and training, and as the craft of artisans show in what they’ve learned.”—EPICTETUS, “But what is philosophy? Doesn’t it simply mean preparing ourselves for what may come? Don’t you understand that really amounts to saying that if I would so prepare myself to endure, then let anything happen that will? Otherwise, it would be like the boxer exiting the ring because he took some punches. Actually, you can leave the boxing ring without consequence, but what advantage would come from abandoning the pursuit of wisdom? So, what should each of us say to every trial we face? This is what I’ve trained for, for this my discipline!”—EPICTETUS, “Indeed, no one can thwart the purposes of your mind— for they can’t be touched by fire, steel, tyranny, slander, or anything.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Every event has two handles— one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other— that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.” “This is why we say that nothing happens to the wise person contrary to their expectations.”—SENECA, “Good people will do what they find honorable to do, even if it requires hard work; they’ll do it even if it causes them injury; they’ll do it even if it will bring danger. Again, they won’t do what they find base, even if it brings wealth, pleasure, or power. Nothing will deter them from what is honorable, and nothing will lure them into what is base.”—SENECA, “Love the humble art you have learned, and take rest in it. Pass through the remainder of your days as one who whole-heartedly entrusts all possessions to the gods, making yourself neither a tyrant nor a slave to any person.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Receive without pride, let go without attachment.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “When you see someone often flashing their rank or position, or someone whose name is often bandied about in public, don’t be envious; such things are bought at the expense of life. . . . Some die on the first rungs of the ladder of success, others before they can reach the top, and the few that make it to the top of their ambition through a thousand indignities realize at the end it’s only for an inscription on their gravestone.”—SENECA, “Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”—MARCUSAURELIUS, “Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life.”—SENECA, “The founder of the universe, who assigned to us the laws of life, provided that we should live well, but not in luxury. Everything needed for our well-being is right before us, whereas what luxury requires is gathered by many miseries and anxieties. Let us use this gift of nature and count it among the greatest things.”—SENECA, “No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”—SENECA, “I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent— no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”—SENECA,