Stoic Meditations

Do you look at other people’s pimples while yon yourselves are covered with countless ulcers?

You are rendered over-proud by a fine house, as though it could never be burned, and your heads are turned by riches as though Fortune has not sufficient strength to swallow them up.

I shall make whatever befalls me become a good thing, but I prefer that what befalls me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause me annoyance.

A Stoic finds herself at ease both in a fancy house where food is served on silver plates and under the bridge sharing the fare with beggars.

Riches, I say, are not a good thing; for if they were, they would make people good: now since that which is found even among bad people cannot be termed good, I do not allow them to be called so.

Nature bids me do good to mankind. Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a benefit.

He who believes giving to be an easy matter, is mistaken: it offers very great difficulties, if we bestow our bounty rationally, and do not scatter it impulsively and at random.

The philosopher may own wealth, but will not own wealth that has been torn from another, or which is stained with another’s blood: her must be obtained without wronging anyone, and without it being won by base means.

Do not, then, make any mistake: riches belong to the class of desirable things. But if my riches leave me, they will carry away with them nothing except themselves.

Health, for Aristotle, is a necessary requirement for a eudaimonic life. For the Stoics, it is preferred, other things being equal, but a life worth living is within grasp of everyone, regardless of their specific condition.