Stoic quotes on discipline, duty, and doing the work

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.

Cast off this hunger for life. The hour of your suffering matters little — suffer you must, at some season. What counts is not the length of your living, but its nobility.

Every habit is maintained by its matching action. Walking by walking, running by running. Want to read well, then read. Stop for thirty days and see what happens.

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.

Sometimes life must be drawn back and held at the lip's edge, even with great pain, for the loved ones who count on us. The good man lives not while pleased to, but while bound by duty.

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.

Such a person is like a priest of the gods: uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by pain, untouched by insult, a fighter in the noblest fight, dyed deep with justice, accepting with all his soul everything assigned as his portion.

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.

A man enters a good inn and, pleased with it, decides to stay. You have forgotten your purpose. You were not traveling to this inn. You were passing through.

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.

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.

God says: prove you have trained properly, obeyed your trainer, eaten as you ought. Then do you show yourself weak when the time comes? Now is the fever. Let it be borne well.

Never value anything as profitable which would compel you to break your promise, lose your self-respect, hate, suspect, curse, or play the hypocrite. The one who prefers his own intelligence and inner deity needs neither solitude nor crowds.

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.

If you withdraw from externals and turn to your own will — exercising it, making it conformable to nature, free, faithful — and if each morning you observe these rules, you are the one who truly makes progress.

Set yourself in motion if it is in your power, and do not look about to see if anyone observes it. Do not expect Plato's Republic; be content if the smallest thing goes well.

Knowledge is gathered not by random grabs but by working the parts to reach the whole. Fit the burden to your strength; take on no more than you can carry. Drink not what you want, but what you can hold.

I wish to conquer at the Olympics. So do I. But consider what precedes and what follows. Then if it is for your good, undertake it. Otherwise you will quit in shame.

Others may obstruct what I do, but they do not obstruct my disposition, which has the power to act with conditions and to alter course. The mind turns every obstacle to its activity into a help.

Teachers fail us by training us to argue rather than to live; students fail them by coming to sharpen their wits, not their souls. So wisdom's discipline turns into mere wordplay.

A good man does nothing for appearance but for doing right. What advantage is it to him? The same advantage as writing a name correctly: the advantage is to have written it.

Has someone wronged me? That is his concern. He has his own disposition, his own activity. What I now possess is what universal nature wills me to possess; what I do is what my own nature wills me to do.