Stoic Stories: A Heroic Account of Stoicism
Neel Burton
Top 10 Best Quotes
“those wonderful words of Virgil, ‘The only hope for the doomed is no hope at all.”
“the Stoics held that the universe undergoes cycles, being periodically destroyed in a great conflagration [Greek, ekpyrosis] and then reborn, ad infinitum.”
“When that which we are enjoying is a true good, we feel joy; when it is not, we feel, at best, pleasure.”
“When his companions wished to return to their country and asked what message they might bear from him, he bade them say this: that children ought to be provided with property and resources of a kind that can swim with them even out of a shipwreck.”
“The first step, I think, is to ascertain that the insult truly is an insult. Whenever someone insults us, we ought to consider three things: whether the substance is true, whom it came from, and why. If the substance is true or conceivably true, the person it came from is known to be fair-minded, and his or her motive is benevolent, then the insult is not an insult so much as a statement of fact, and, moreover, one that could be very helpful to us.”
“Nor tears, nor cries, can give the dead relief. Desist, my much-lov’d lord, t’ indulge your pain; You bear no more than what the gods ordain. My fates permit me not from hence to fly; Nor he, the great controller of the sky. Long wand’ring ways for you the pow’rs decree; On land hard labors, and a length of sea. Then, after many painful years are past, On Latium’s happy shore you shall be cast, Where gentle Tiber from his bed beholds The flow’ry meadows, and the feeding folds. There end your toils; and there your fates provide A quiet kingdom, and a royal bride: There fortune shall the Trojan line restore, And you for lost Creusa weep no more. Fear not that I shall watch, with servile shame, Th’ imperious looks of some proud Grecian dame; Or, stopping to the victor’s lust, disgrace My goddess mother, or my royal race. And now, farewell! The parent of the gods Restrains my fleeting soul in her abodes: I trust our common issue to your care.”
“Imagine a novel with only wise people, sitting in a garden with their friends, looking at birds and flowers. Fiction needs at least a few fools, or some foolishness, if there is to be any plot.”
“If ‘the wicked walk in a circle’, says Augustine, ‘this is not because their life is to recur by means of these circles, which these philosophers imagine, but because the path in which their false doctrine now runs is circuitous.”
“If being better is the surest way of feeling better, it must be better than feeling better.”
“Her detachment and perspective, which enable her to empathize with Aeneas and even to help him along his way, are an epitome of Stoicism, and especially of ‘the view from above’. If we are too absorbed in our life and times, our perspectives shrink, and we become fearful and hopeful and prone to upset.”
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Book Keywords:
virtue, depression, writing, writing-process, pleasure, positivethinking, therapy, stoicism, writing-advice
