The Stoic Magazine Library

This is the form Stoic optimism takes—not blind positivity, but hopeful courage in the face of reality.

We choose to be students of Stoic wisdom because of its lessons in how to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The world around us is ordered. ... the chaos we perceive is really a chaos within ourselves.

The craziness and turbulence on this earth have been going on for many, many centuries now. There’s nothing new. The same is true for the turbulence in individual human lives. Are we really surprised?

In this extract from his new book Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher-King, William O. Stephens discusses the importance of Memoranda (Meditations) as a philosophical text.

Each morning offers another opportunity to choose restraint over reaction, integrity over convenience, and courage over ease. My gratitude is a daily commitment to live well, even imperfectly.

Harmony is oſten mistaken for balance or calm, but the Stoics understood it as alignment: a fitting relationship between my judgments, my actions, and the world as it actually is. I can choose restraint instead of reactivity, attention instead of avoidance.

There is another form of gratitude that oſten goes overlooked—one that matters even more when life is difficult. It is gratitude for capacity.

Gratitude is learning how to receive what arrives, without clinging to what passes or resenting what never came.

For Stoics, happiness comes from the practice of our virtues, which leads to “eudaimonia”— flourishing. And this begins in gratitude.

The world around us is ordered. ... the chaos we perceive is really a chaos within ourselves.

A giſt creates a bond; gratitude is simply the refusal to deny that bond through fear, resentment, or forgetfulness. To receive well is already an act of virtue.

Be ready with gratitude not just for past benefactors but also those we are engaged with in our present relationships, and to continue that disposition into the future.