Stoic quotes

The internet is full of Stoic quotations no Stoic ever said. "We suffer more in imagination than in reality" is attributed to Seneca and appears nowhere in his work. "Dare to be wise" is Horace. "Don't explain your philosophy, embody it" is a paraphrase that surfaces only in the twentieth century.

This list has been checked against that. Fifteen sayings that were in circulation have been taken out because they do not appear in the surviving texts. What remains are ninety-five quotations you can trace back to the source.

They are grouped here by author. Each quotation also appears in the exercises themselves, beside a proposition or a situation where it adds something.

Epictetus 27

• It is not the one who abuses you who insults you, but your judgment that he insults you.
• If someone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, answer: he did not know my other faults, or he would have mentioned those too.
• Act your given part well; to choose it belongs to another.
• It is impossible to learn what one thinks one already knows.
• Nothing great comes into being all at once, not even a bunch of grapes or a fig.
• Do not wait until you can speak about virtue; act on it.
• Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.
• First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.
• Never call yourself a philosopher; simply do what follows from your principles.
• Never say of anything 'I have lost it', but 'I have given it back'.
• Seek not that things should happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do.
• Do not demand that things happen as you wish; wish them to happen as they do.
• Illness hinders the body, not the will, unless the will permits it.
• Some things are within our power, and some are not.
• When someone acts badly toward you, remember that he acts from his own view of what is good.
• Everything has two handles: one by which it can be carried, and one by which it cannot.
• It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things.
• If your brother acts unjustly, do not take hold of the injustice, but of the fact that he is your brother.
• Riches consist not in having many possessions, but in having few wants.
• If you wish to be rich, do not add to your money, but subtract from your desire.
• Difficulties show a person's character.
• If you wish to improve, be content to appear foolish.
• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
• Only the educated are free.
• It is not the man who reviles you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.
• No one is free who is not master of himself.
• Circumstances do not make a person; they reveal him to himself.

Seneca 35

• The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
• The first movement of the mind is not within our power.
• The greater part of life passes while we are doing something other than living.
• While we postpone, life speeds by.
• We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
• Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
• Associate with those who will make a better person of you.
• No wind is favorable to one who does not know to which port he is sailing.
• It is not the one who has little, but the one who craves more, who is poor.
• Those who cross the sea change the sky above them, not their mind.
• The bravest sight in the world is someone struggling against adversity.
• Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
• Whoever fears death will never do anything worthy of a living person.
• You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.
• If you wish to be loved, love.
• As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
• It is not that we have little time, but that we waste much of it.
• Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
• It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
• Nothing is ours except time.
• The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes today.
• It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.
• People are frugal in guarding their property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
• To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
• Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling.
• No one is more unhappy than the person who never faces adversity.
• He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.
• No one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches.
• A great fortune is a great slavery.
• He who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
• Let us prepare our minds as if we had come to the very end of life.
• A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a person perfected without trials.
• Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
• It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
• It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Marcus Aurelius 27

• Take away the judgment, and the complaint is taken away.
• What stands in the way becomes the way.
• You have power over your mind, not over events outside you.
• Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
• Be strict with yourself and lenient with others.
• Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
• The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
• Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
• How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does.
• Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.
• The best revenge is not to become like him.
• It is not death a man should fear, but never beginning to live.
• Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it with the same weapons of reason that arm you today.
• Look well into yourself; there is a source of strength that will always spring up if you will always look.
• If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.
• Do every act of your life as though it were the last act of your life.
• What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.
• Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live.
• Nowhere can a person find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
• People exist for the sake of one another. Teach them or bear with them.
• When you are offended by someone's fault, turn to yourself and consider what similar thing you do.
• Kindness is invincible, provided it is genuine and without pretense.
• Confine yourself to the present.
• Men exist for the sake of one another; teach them then, or bear with them.
• The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
• Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
• You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Musonius Rufus 4

• If one accomplishes some good with toil, the toil passes, but the good remains.
• In training the body we train the soul as well.
• We must train the soul, for we carry in ourselves the seeds of both virtue and vice.
• Practice is more effective than theory.

Zeno 2

• Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.
• Nature gave us two ears and one mouth, so that we may listen more than we speak.

Every one of these quotations belongs to an exercise. If you would rather use them than read them: