Top 120 William B. Irvine Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

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

— William B. Irvine

53. “Epictetus: “Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.”

— William B. Irvine

54. “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

55. “My other self lacks self-discipline; left to his own devices, he will always take the path of least resistance through life and as a result will be little more than a simple-minded pleasure seeker. He is also a coward. My other self is not my friend; to the contrary, he is best regarded, in the words of Epictetus, “as an enemy lying in wait.”

— William B. Irvine

56. “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

57. “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

58. “How much should a Stoic grieve? In proper grief, Seneca tells Polybius, our reason “will maintain a mean which will copy neither indifference nor madness, and will keep us in the state that is the mark of an affectionate, and not an unbalanced, mind.”

— William B. Irvine

59. “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

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

— William B. Irvine

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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

64. “Negative visualization does not have these drawbacks. We don’t have to wait to engage in negative visualization the way we have to wait to be struck by a catastrophe. Being struck by a catastrophe can easily kill us; engaging in negative visualization can’t. And because negative visualization can be done repeatedly, its beneficial effects, unlike those of a catastrophe, can last indefinitely.”

— William B. Irvine

65. “They say familiarity breeds contempt. This may or may not be true, but it is clear that familiarity breeds comfort: do something scary often enough, and it not only ceases to be scary, it becomes automatic.”

— William B. Irvine

66. “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

67. “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

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

— William B. Irvine

69. “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

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

— William B. Irvine

71. “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

72. “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

73. “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

74. “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

75. “Evolutionary processes made us susceptible to suffering but also gave us – accidentally – a tool by which we can prevent much of this suffering. The tool, once again, is our reasoning ability. Because we can reason, we can not only understand our evolutionary predicament but take conscious steps to escape it, to the extent possible.”

— William B. Irvine

76. “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

77. “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

78. “Seneca writes, “Nature requires from us some sorrow, while more than this is the result of vanity. But never will I demand of you that you should not grieve at all.”1.”

— William B. Irvine

79. “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

80. “If you refuse to enter contests that you are capable of losing, you will never lose a contest.”

— William B. Irvine

81. “Whereas most people valued fame and fortune,6 a Stoic’s primary goal in life was to attain and then maintain tranquility – to avoid, that is, experiencing negative emotions while continuing to enjoy positive emotions.”

— William B. Irvine

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

87. “Others may have it in their power to affect how and even whether you live, but they do not, say the Stoics, have it in their power to ruin your life. Only you can ruin it, by failing to live in accordance with the correct values. The Stoics believed in social reform, but they also believed in personal transformation.”

— William B. Irvine

88. “The Stoics fell somewhere between the Cyrenaics and the Cynics: They thought people should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friendship and wealth, but only if they did not cling to these good things. Indeed, they thought we should periodically interrupt our enjoyment of what life has to offer to spend time contemplating the loss of whatever it is we are enjoying. Affiliating.”

— William B. Irvine

89. “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

90. “The Stoics became experts on argument forms, such as “If A, then B; but A, therefore B” or “Either A or B; but not A, therefore B.” These argument forms, which are called modus ponens and modus tollendo ponens, respectively, are still used by logicians.”

— William B. Irvine

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

— William B. Irvine

92. “The Stoics’ advocacy of sexual reserve will sound prudish to modern readers, but they had a point. We live in an age of sexual indulgence, and for many people the consequences of this indulgence have been catastrophic in terms of their peace of mind.”

— William B. Irvine

93. “We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire.”

— William B. Irvine

94. “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

95. “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

96. “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

97. “The profound realization, thanks to the practice of Stoicism, that acquiring the things that those in my social circle typically crave and work hard to afford will, in the long run, make zero difference in how happy I am and will in no way contribute to my having a good life.”

— William B. Irvine

98. “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

99. “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

100. “The Stoics, as we have seen, thought tranquility was worth pursuing, and the tranquility they sought, it will be remembered, is a psychological state in which we experience few negative emotions, such as anxiety, grief, and fear, but an abundance of positive emotions, especially joy.”

— William B. Irvine