Quotes about Stoicism

As for the fear, you'll have to put up with that like the rest of us.

A man is no bigger than the things which he allows to annoy him.

Christianity is not stoicism. The Cross does not sanctify us by destroying human feeling. Detachment is not insensibility. Too many ascetics fail to become great saints precisely because their rules and ascetic practices have merely deadened their humanity instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.

The mind in itself wants nothing, unless it creates a want for itself; therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not perturb and impede itself.

To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing-here is perfection of character.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

Even death may prove unreal at last and stoics be astounded into heaven. Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned, Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind. That like the crocus budding through the snow, that like a swimmer rising from the deep, that like a burning secret which doth go. Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep, emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea and prove that death but routs life into victory.

There is a noble manner of being poor and who does not know it will never be rich.

After a while, he went back to his task; he decided that pain was not a valid reason for stopping.