1Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good,2 to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
A benefit should be kept like a buried treasure, only to be dug up in necessity... Nature bids us to do well by all....... Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness. — Seneca, On the Happy Life, 24.2-3
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Here's a lesson to test your mind's mettle: take part of a week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantly in shabby clothes, and ask yourself if this is really the worst that you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when Fortune is kind the soul can build defenses against her ravages. So it is that soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so that when it comes they won't grow tired. — Seneca, Moral Letters, 18.5-6
September 12th: Be down to earth, or be brought down
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Zeno always said that nothing was more unbecoming than putting on airs, especially with the young. — Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.22
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Philosophy isn't a parlor trick or made for show. It's not concerned with words, but with facts. It's not employed for some pleasure before the day is spent, or to relieve the uneasiness of our leisure. It shapes and builds up the soul, it gives order to life, guides action, shows what and shouldn't be done — it sits at the rudder steering our course as we vacillate in uncertainties. Without it, no one can live without fear or free from care. Countless things happen every hour that require advice, and such advice is to be sought out in philosophy. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.26
