Stoic quotes on fear and anxiety

To leave this life, if there are gods, is nothing to fear — they will not involve you in evil. If gods do not exist or do not care, what is it to live without gods or providence?

There is nothing more wretched than worry over what the future holds. Our troubled minds flutter with unaccountable fear. How shall we avoid this? If there is no reaching forward in our life, if it is withdrawn into itself.

The ruling mind requires no fixed material. It makes material from what opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls in. What would extinguish a small flame feeds the strong fire and makes it rise higher.

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.

Does any man hinder me from going with smiles, with cheerfulness, with contentment? You will put me in chains? Me, in chains? You may fetter my leg, but not even Zeus himself can overpower my will.

Be like the promontory against which waves continually break — it stands firm and tames the water. Am I unhappy because this happened? Not so — happy, rather, since I continue free from pain, crushed by neither present nor future.

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.

The tyrant will chain — what? The leg. He will take — what? The neck. What will he never chain or take? The will. This is why the ancients taught Know yourself. Begin with small things; proceed to the greater.

If the gods have power, why not pray for them to give you the faculty of not fearing what you fear, or not desiring what you desire, rather than praying that things should happen or not happen?

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.

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.

Nothing happens to you that you were not formed by nature to bear. The same happens to another, and he stands firm. It is shameful that ignorance should be stronger than wisdom.

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.

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.

Do not disturb yourself by thinking of the whole of your life. On every occasion ask: what is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing? You will be ashamed to confess.

There is a saying from our philosopher Posidonius — never count yourself safe simply because you happen to wield the weapons of Fortune; fight with your own arms instead.

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not that thing which disturbs you but your own judgment about it. It is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.

Train yourself to avoid both — fear of the one, desire for the other. Reverse the usual fight: pull back from what attracts you, and stand up to what comes at you.

Press forward, and you will find some terrors lose their grip precisely because they have inspired such dread. No evil is great that comes last of all. Death's terror lies only in its lingering — once arrived, it stays not.

Does death test me again and again? Let it. I have been testing death just as often. From when? Long before my birth. Death is not-being, and I already know what not-being is.

Would you not call him the greatest of fools who thought a lamp was worse off when extinguished than before it was lighted? We mortals are lighted and extinguished. On either side of suffering, deep peace.