Top 120 William B. Irvine Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Although all things in excess bring harm, the greatest danger comes from excessive good fortune: it stirs the brain, invites the mind to entertain idle fancies, and shrouds in thick fog the distinction between falsehood and truth.”

— William B. Irvine

52. “MODERN POLITICS presents another obstacle to the acceptance of Stoicism. The world is full of politicians who tell us that if we are unhappy it isn’t our fault. To the contrary, our unhappiness is caused by something the government did to us or is failing to do for us.”

— William B. Irvine

53. “Seneca observes that “chastity comes with time to spare, lechery has never a moment.”11.”

— William B. Irvine

54. “According to Epictetus, the primary concern of philosophy should be the art of living: Just as wood is the medium of the carpenter and bronze is the medium of the sculptor, your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living.”

— William B. Irvine

55. “Stoic philosopher Seneca, about whom I will have much to say in this book, “He who studies with a philosopher should take away with him some one good thing every day: he should daily return home a sounder man, or on the way to become sounder.”

— William B. Irvine

56. “In my research on desire, I discovered nearly unanimous agreement among thoughtful people that we are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability. There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have. This.”

— William B. Irvine

57. “Lawrence C. Becker puts it, “Stoic ethics is a species of eudaimonism. Its central, organizing concern is about what we ought to do or be to live well – to flourish.”16 In the words of the historian Paul Veyne, “Stoicism is not so much an ethic as it is a paradoxical recipe for happiness.”

— William B. Irvine

58. “And when asked what he had learned from philosophy, Diogenes replied, “To be prepared for every fortune.”

— William B. Irvine

59. “Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that “all things everywhere are perishable.”

— William B. Irvine

60. “SENECA OFFERS lots of specific advice on how to prevent anger. We should, he says, fight our tendency to believe the worst about others and our tendency to jump to conclusions about their motivations. We need to keep in mind that just because things don’t turn out the way we want them to, it doesn’t follow that someone has done us an injustice.”

— William B. Irvine

61. “One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset. Suppose, for example, that someone mocks us for being bald when we in fact are bald: “Why is it an insult,” Seneca asks, “to be told what is self-evident?”3.”

— William B. Irvine

62. “Stoic techniques at once but to start with one technique and, having become proficient in it, go on to another. And a good technique to start with, I think, is negative visualization.”

— William B. Irvine

63. “One of the most interesting developments in my practice of Stoicism has been my transformation from someone who dreaded insults into an insult connoisseur. For one thing, I have become a collector of insults: On being insulted, I analyze and categorize the insult. For another thing, I look forward to being insulted inasmuch as it affords me the opportunity to perfect my “insult game.”

— William B. Irvine

64. “This is because the desire for luxuries is not a natural desire. Natural desires, such as a desire for water when we are thirsty, can be satisfied; unnatural desires cannot.12 Therefore, when we find ourselves wanting something, we should pause to ask whether the desire is natural or unnatural, and if it is unnatural, we should think twice about trying to satisfy it.”

— William B. Irvine

65. “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.”

— William B. Irvine

66. “This, at any rate, is the advice Buddha gave to Anathapindika, a man of “unmeasurable wealth”: “He that cleaves to wealth had better cast it away than allow his heart to be poisoned by it; but he who does not cleave to wealth, and possessing riches, uses them rightly, will be a blessing unto his fellows.”

— William B. Irvine

67. “Self-deprecating humor has become my standard response to insults. When someone criticizes me, I reply that matters are even worse than he is suggesting. If, for example, someone suggests that I am lazy, I reply that it is a miracle that I get any work done at all. If someone accuses me of having a big ego, I reply that on most days it is noon before I become aware that anyone else inhabits the planet.”

— William B. Irvine

68. “Possessing wealth, he observes, won’t enable us to live without sorrow and won’t console us in our old age. And although wealth can procure for us physical luxuries and various pleasures of the senses, it can never bring us contentment or banish our grief.”

— William B. Irvine

69. “Our goal should therefore be to become indifferent to other people’s opinions of us. He adds that if we can succeed in doing this, we will improve the quality of our life.”

— William B. Irvine

70. “Negative visualization is therefore a wonderful way to regain our appreciation of life and with it our capacity for joy. T.”

— William B. Irvine

71. “Henry David Thoreau, for example, doesn’t directly mention Stoicism or any of the great Stoics in Walden, his masterpiece, but to those who know what to look for, the Stoic influence is present. In his Journal, Thoreau is more forthcoming. He writes, for example, that “Zeno the Stoic stood in precisely the same relation to the world that I do now.”

— William B. Irvine

72. “Ideally, a Stoic will be oblivious to the services he does for others, as oblivious as a grapevine is when it yields a cluster of grapes to a vintner. He will not pause to boast about the service he has performed but will move on to perform his next service, the way the grape vine moves on to bear more grapes.”

— William B. Irvine

73. “Seneca reminds us how small our bodies are and poses this question: “Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?”

— William B. Irvine

74. “Marcus: “Yes, they say that life is more like wrestling than like dancing.”

— William B. Irvine

75. “Exercise, done properly, not only isn’t dangerous but promotes our health. Furthermore, the benefits of exercise will probably spill over into other areas of our life. We are likely, for example, to find that we have more energy than we used to. Our self-esteem is also likely to rise.”

— William B. Irvine

76. “Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, “the more masters will he have to serve.”

— William B. Irvine

77. “In the Meditations, he offers advice on what to do at such junctures: Continue to practice Stoicism, “even when success looks hopeless.”

— William B. Irvine

78. “The Stoics, as we have seen, recommend that we use humor to deflect insults: Cato cracked a joke when someone spit in his face, as did Socrates when someone boxed his ears. Seneca suggests that besides being an effective response to an insult, humor can be used to prevent ourselves from becoming angry: “Laughter,” he says, “and a lot of it, is the right response to the things which drive us to tears!”

— William B. Irvine

79. “What Stoics discover, though, is that willpower is like muscle power: The more they exercise their muscles, the stronger they get, and the more they exercise their will, the stronger it gets. Indeed, by practicing Stoic self-denial techniques over a long period, Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control.”

— William B. Irvine

80. “OTHER PEOPLE, as we have seen, are the enemy in our battle for tranquility. It was for this reason that the Stoics spent time developing strategies for dealing with this enemy.”

— William B. Irvine

81. “Like Buddhists, Stoics advise us to contemplate the world’s impermanence. “All things human,” Seneca reminds us, “are short-lived and perishable.”19.”

— William B. Irvine

82. “Marcus suggests that when we know our death is at hand, we can ease our anguish on leaving this world by taking a moment to reflect on all the annoying people we will no longer have to deal with when we are gone.”

— William B. Irvine

83. “Epictetus would reject this manner of dealing with insults as being woefully counterproductive. He would point out, to begin with, that the political correctness movement has some untoward side effects. One is that the process of protecting disadvantaged individuals from insults will tend to make them hypersensitive to insults: They will, as a result, feel the sting not only of direct insults but of implied insults as well.”

— William B. Irvine

84. “According to Seneca, “A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is.” He therefore recommends that we “do away with complaint about past sufferings and with all language like this: ‘None has ever been worse off than I. What sufferings, what evils have I endured!’” After all, what point is there in “being unhappy, just because once you were unhappy?”21.”

— William B. Irvine

85. “Although it might not be possible to eliminate grief from our life, it is possible, Seneca thinks, to take steps to minimize the amount of grief we experience over the course of a lifetime.”

— William B. Irvine

86. “What ailment of yours have you cured today? What failing have you resisted? Where can you show improvement?”1.”

— William B. Irvine

87. “When, as the result of being exposed to luxurious living, people become hard to please, a curious thing happens. Rather than mourning the loss of their ability to enjoy simple things, they take pride in their newly gained inability to enjoy anything but “the best.”

— William B. Irvine

88. “He adds that if we detect anger and hatred within us and wish to seek revenge, one of the best forms of revenge on another person is to refuse to be like him.12 S.”

— William B. Irvine

89. “Many, on hearing Ebert’s story, would use the word unlucky to describe him, but a much more fitting word would be unvanquished. During the last decade of his life, he experienced enough setbacks for several lifetimes and yet was not embittered by his fate. It was a triumph of the human spirit.”

— William B. Irvine

90. “It is indeed curious: Although they would have been satisfied with next to nothing, they nevertheless strove for something. Here is how Stoics would explain this seeming paradox. Stoic philosophy, while teaching us to be satisfied with whatever we’ve got, also counsels us to seek certain things in life. We should, for example, strive to become better people – to become virtuous in the ancient sense of the word.”

— William B. Irvine

91. “In your practice of Stoicism, you will also want, in conjunction with applying the trichotomy of control, to become a psychological fatalist about the past and the present – but not about the future.”

— William B. Irvine

92. “And why is self-discipline worth possessing? Because those who possess it have the ability to determine what they do with their life. Those who lack self-discipline will have the path they take through life determined by someone or something else, and as a result, there is a very real danger that they will mislive.”

— William B. Irvine

93. “The Stoics, for example, did not sit around apathetically, resigned to whatever the future held in store; to the contrary, they spent their days working to affect the outcome of future events.”

— William B. Irvine

94. “A growing number of people have realized that they lack what the ancient philosophers would have called a philosophy of life. Such a philosophy tells you what in life is worth having and provides you with a strategy for obtaining it. If you try to live without a philosophy of life, you will find yourself extemporizing your way through your days. As a result, your daily efforts are likely to be haphazard, and your life is likely to be misspent. What a waste!”

— William B. Irvine

95. “Marcus advises us to perform with resoluteness the duties we humans were created to perform. Nothing else, he says, should distract us. Indeed, when we awaken in the morning, rather than lazily lying in bed, we should tell ourselves that we must get up to do the proper work of man, the work we were created to perform.”

— William B. Irvine

96. “Thus, tell someone that you possess and are willing to share with him an ancient strategy for attaining virtue, and you will likely be met with a yawn. Tell him that you possess and are willing to share an ancient strategy for attaining tranquility, though, and his ears are likely to perk up; in most cases, people don’t need to be convinced of the value of tranquility.”

— William B. Irvine

97. “Epictetus tells us that “it is difficulties that reveal what men amount to; and so, whenever you’re struck by a difficulty, remember that God, like a trainer in the gymnasium, has matched you against a tough young opponent.” And why would God do such a thing?”

— William B. Irvine

98. “Indeed, when we awaken in the morning, rather than lazily lying in bed, we should tell ourselves that we must get up to do the proper work of man, the work we were created to perform.6.”

— William B. Irvine

99. “They warn us to be careful in choosing our associates; other people, after all, have the power to shatter our tranquility – if we let them.”

— William B. Irvine

100. “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”

— William B. Irvine