Stoic Sage

Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind. To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero …). To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do < … > behind closed doors. If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

Meditations 3.16

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. If you can privilege your own mind, your guiding spirit and your reverence for its powers, that should keep you clear of dramatics, of wailing and gnashing of teeth. You won’t need solitude—or a cast of thousands, either. Above all, you’ll be free of fear and desire. And how long your body will contain the soul that inhabits it will cause you not a moment’s worry. If it’s time for you to go, leave willingly—as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor. And concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state—the state a rational, civic mind should be in.

Meditations 3.7

And the mind must not be kept invariably at the same tension, but must be diverted to amusements. Socrates did not blush to play with little children, and Cato, when he was wearied by the cares of state, would relax his mind with wine, and Scipio would disport his triumphal and soldierly person to the sound of music, moving not with the voluptuous contortions that are now the fashion, when men even in walking squirm with more than a woman’s voluptuousness, but in the manly style in which men in the days of old Mere wont to dance during the times of sport and festival, risking no loss of dignity even if their own enemies looked on. The mind must be given relaxation; it will arise better and keener after resting. As rich fields must not be forced—for their productiveness, if they have no rest, will quickly exhaust them—so constant labour will break the vigour of the mind, but if it is released and relaxed a little while, it will recover its powers; continuous mental toil breeds in the mind a certain dullness and languor.

On the Tranquillity of Mind 17.3

This abiding stability of mind the Greeks call euthymia, “well-being of the soul,” on which there is an excellent treatise by Democritus; I call it tranquillity. For there is no need to imitate and reproduce words in their Greek shape; the thing itself, which is under discussion, must be designated by some name which ought to have, not the form, but the force, of the Greek term. What we are seeking, therefore, is how the mind may always pursue a steady and favourable course, may be well-disposed towards itself, and may view its condition with joy, and suffer no interruption of this joy, but may abide in a peaceful state, being never uplifted nor ever cast down. This will be “tranquillity.” Let us seek in a general way how it may be obtained; then from the universal remedy you will appropriate as much as you like. Meanwhile we must drag forth into the light the whole of the infirmity, and each one will then recognize his own share of it; at the same time you will understand how much less trouble you have with your self-depreciation than those who, fettered to some showy declaration and struggling beneath the burden of some grand title, are held more by shame than by desire to the pretence they are making.

On the Tranquillity of Mind 2.2

[from Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights XIX 1, 14-21] A renowned Stoic philosopher drew from his satchel Book Five of the Discourses of Epictetus, edited by Arrian, writings that undoubtedly agree with those of Zeno and Chrysippus. There (translated from the Greek) we find a passage to this effect: Impressions (which philosophers call), striking a person’s mind as soon as he perceives something within range of his senses, are not voluntary or subject to his will, they impose themselves on people’s attention almost with a will of their own. But the act of assent (which they call) which endorses these impressions is voluntary and a function of the human will. Consequently, when a frightening noise comes from heaven or in consequence of some accident, if an abrupt alarm threatens danger, or if anything else of the kind happens, the mind even of a wise man is inevitably shaken a little, blanches and recoils – not from any preconceived idea that something bad is about to happen, but because certain irrational reflexes forestall the action of the rational mind. Instead of automatically assenting to these impressions (i.e. these frightening mental images), however (that is), our wise man spurns and rejects them, because there is nothing there that need cause him any fear. And this, they say, is how the mind of the wise man differs from the fool’s: the latter believes that impressions apparently portending pain and hardship when they strike his mind really are as they seem, so he approves (the word the Stoics use when discussing this matter) them and accepts that he should fear them as if this were self-evident. But the wise man, soon regaining his colour and composure, (does not assent), reaffirms his support of the view he’s always had about such impressions – that they are not in the least to be feared, but are only superficially and speciously frightening.

Fragments 9.9