Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Show me someone's sick and happy, in danger and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I'd like to see a Stoic. But since you can't show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way... Show me! ~Epictetus, Discourses, 2.19.24-25a,28
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
This is the mark of perfection of character — to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,7.69
Once there was an old and very wise man. Everyday he would sit outside a gas station in his rocking chair and wait to greet motorists as they passed through his small town. On this day his granddaughter knelt down at the foot of his chair and slowly passed the time with him.
March 21st: The best retreat is in here, not out there
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in a 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 —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,4.3.1
Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand.
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, that is when we join the fashionable madmen.
