The Stoic Magazine Library

We need not just to empty or free up our minds, but even more to fill them with philosophical principles. ...We need to be continually turning them over in our minds, so we really understand them when they’re needed.

Life calculated and “integrated” in a Stoic manner may truly be the most satisfying of all. Can’t we just call it a pleasure?

If we look at examples and teachings provided by the classic Stoics, indifference to others isn’t remotely how they would suggest we deal with their travails and difficulties.

For us non-sages, we are going to fail sometimes, feel bad about that, and then hopefully use that bad feeling to steer us away from that failing.

One might even speculate that if Epictetus were the only Stoic author whose works had survived from antiquity, we might get the idea that virtue was only one of a number of important concepts for the Stoics, rather than being an absolutely central one.

One useful way to approach this kind of situation is to ask yourself why it matters to you whether other people understand or even know about Stoicism.

Each of the four cardinal virtues includes a number of subordinate virtues.