Stoic quotes on judgment, perception, and the mind

Every day, every hour, exposes how slight we are — proof anew that frailty has slipped our minds. As we plot for ages to come, the moments force a glance behind, where Death waits.

It is your own opinions that disturb you. When the tyrant threatens to chain your leg, the man who values his leg begs for pity. But the man who values his will says: if it suits you, chain it.

Look at death in itself. Strip away the images your imagination adds. You will find it is nothing but an operation of nature. To fear an operation of nature is childish.

'Graft now your pears, Meliboeus; set your vines in their rows.' Yet what folly to order one's life as though one held the title to tomorrow. What madness to lay distant plans against a future no one owns.

The beginning of philosophy is consciousness of your own weakness about necessary things. We have no natural notion of geometry or music. We learn them by art, and those who do not know them do not claim to.

Everything of the body is a stream. Everything of the soul, a dream and vapor. Life is a war and a stranger's stay. After fame, oblivion. What can guide a person? One thing only: philosophy.

What good is crossing seas or moving city to city? If you wish to leave behind your trouble, you need not a different place but a different self. Whatever land you choose, you carry your own with you.

This is the beginning of philosophy: perceiving how people disagree, inquiring into the cause, distrusting mere appearance, and discovering some rule — as we discovered a balance for weights and a square for straight and crooked things.

You must now see what whole you belong to, and that a limit of time is fixed for you. If you do not use it to clear the clouds from your mind, it will go, and it will never return.

Your ills, as long as you carry their causes, will wear you down over land and sea. What use is running away? That from which you are running is within you.

Living among people so confused about what troubles them and why, it is worth watching constantly. Am I one of them? Do I conduct myself as a prudent and temperate man?

If you work at what is before you, following reason seriously, vigorously, and calmly — keeping your inner self pure as if returning it now — expecting nothing, fearing nothing, speaking every word with conviction: you will live well.

When has anyone who actually tried found these tasks false to him? When did they not turn out easier in the doing? Our want of confidence is not the result of difficulty; the difficulty arises from our want of confidence.

If a man places his interest alongside sanctity, goodness, and friends, all are secured. Put interest in one place and justice in another, and everything gives way under the weight.

What remains peculiar to the good person: to be content with what happens, and with the thread spun for them. Not to defile the divinity planted in their breast, but to preserve it tranquil, saying nothing contrary to truth.

Even if a man holds his tongue and confides in one listener, he soon draws a crowd — once a secret turns into common talk. Peace of mind is built above all on doing no wrong.

He who does not know who he is, what is true or false, what is good or bad, cannot desire or act rightly. He walks dumb and blind, thinking he is somebody.

If you find anything better than justice, truth, temperance, and fortitude — anything better than your mind's satisfaction in what reason enables — turn to it with all your soul.

Whoever expects punishment receives it; whoever deserves punishment expects it. Where conscience is bad, safety may sometimes arrive, but never ease — for a man imagines that even if not arrested now, he soon may be.

The business of the wise man is to use appearances according to nature. Every soul assents to truth, rejects what is false, and holds back from what is uncertain, moving toward good and away from evil.

Everything that is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself and terminates in itself. Praise is no part of it. A thing is made neither worse nor better by being praised.

Whoever has long readied himself for a danger faces it boldly; whoever has practised hardship endures it. The unready, by contrast, panic at the smallest trouble. Take care that nothing reaches you by surprise.

Exercise yourself daily. Each morning, examine every person and thing. Apply the rule. Is this within the will or outside it? Outside it. Take it away.