Top 100 Stoic Philosophy Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.”

— Epictetus

52. “No man is free who is not master of himself.”

— Epictetus

53. “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”

— Epictetus

54. “Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”

— Epictetus

55. “Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.”

— Epictetus

56. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

— Marcus Aurelius

57. “Throw me to the wolves and I will return leading the pack.”

— Seneca

58. “In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.”

— Epictetus

59. “Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.”

— Pythagoras

60. “Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.”

— Marcus Aurelius

61. “When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.”

— Epictetus

62. “Books are the training weights of the mind.”

— Epictetus

63. “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

— Epictetus

64. “Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.”

— Epictetus

65. “The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.”

— Epictetus

66. “No great thing is created suddenly.”

— Epictetus

67. “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.”

— Epictetus

68. “If you wish to be a writer, write.”

— Epictetus

69. “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

— Epictetus

70. “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

— Seneca

71. “If anyone is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault. Nothing else is the cause of anxiety or loss of tranquility except our own opinion.”

— Epictetus

72. “Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own.”

— Epictetus

73. “A podium and a prison is each a place, one high and the other low, but in either place your freedom of choice can be maintained if you so wish.”

— Epictetus

74. “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.”

— Epictetus

75. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

— Epictetus

76. “When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.”

— Marcus Aurelius

77. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

— Epictetus

78. “You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in your power to conquer.”

— Epictetus

79. “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”

— Seneca

80. “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own...”

— Epictetus

81. “What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”

— Epictetus

82. “The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”

— Epictetus

83. “All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.”

— Marcus Aurelius

84. “What is the fruit of these teachings? Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated – tranquility, fearlessness, and freedom. We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.”

— Epictetus

85. “We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself.”

— Seneca

86. “The proper work of the mind is the exercise of choice, refusal, yearning, repulsion, preparation, purpose, and assent. What then can pollute and clog the mind’s proper functioning? Nothing but its own corrupt decisions.”

— Epictetus

87. “A person who doesn’t know what the universe is, doesn’t know where they are. A person who doesn’t know their purpose in life doesn’t know who they are or what the universe is. A person who doesn’t know any one of these things doesn’t know why they are here. So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?”

— Marcus Aurelius

88. “Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?”

— Marcus Aurelius

89. “The best answer to anger is silence.”

— Marcus Aurelius

90. “Your principles can’t be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it’s continually in your power to reignite new ones. ... It’s possible to start living again! See things anew as you once did – that is how to restart life!”

— Marcus Aurelius

91. “Keep this thought at the ready at daybreak, and through the day and night – there is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all outside of your sphere of choice, regarding nothing else as your possession, surrendering all else to God and Fortune.”

— Epictetus

92. “Tranquility can’t be grasped except by those who have reached an unwavering and firm power of judgment – the rest constantly fall and rise in their decisions, wavering in a state of alternately rejecting and accepting things. What is the cause of this back and forth? It’s because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide – common opinion.”

— Seneca

93. “The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material are straight that makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.”

— Epictetus

94. “Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It’s not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad.”

— Seneca

95. “We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country – anything with which we might associate.”

— Epictetus

96. “So in the majority of other things, we address circumstances not in accordance with the right assumptions, but mostly by following wretched habit. Since all that I’ve said is the case, the person in training must seek to rise above, so as to stop seeking out pleasure and steering away from pain; to stop clinging to living and abhorring death; and in the case of property and money, to stop valuing receiving over giving.”

— Musonius Rufus

97. “How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements – how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!”

— Seneca

98. “I am your teacher and you are learning in my school. My aim is to bring you to completion, unhindered, free from compulsive behavior, unrestrained, without shame, free, flourishing, and happy, looking to God in things great and small – your aim is to learn and diligently practice all these things. Why then don’t you complete the work, if you have the right aim and I have both the right aim and right preparation? What is missing? ... The work is quite feasible, and is the only thing in our power. ... Let go of the past. We must only begin. Believe me and you will see.”

— Epictetus

99. “Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.”

— Marcus Aurelius

100. “For if a person shifts their caution to their own reasoned choices and the acts of those choices, they will at the same time gain the will to avoid, but if they shift their caution away from their own reasoned choices to things not under their control, seeking to avoid what is controlled by others, they will then be agitated, fearful, and unstable.”

— Epictetus