That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic

Stoics such as Musonius and Epictetus defend the view that the cause of our sorrows lies not in the things themselves and the people around us but in our own judgments and in how we choose to respond to challenges.

For surely there is no other end in becoming good than to become happy and to live happily for the remainder of our lives.

And so it remains for me to say that the man who is unwilling to exert himself almost always convicts himself as unworthy of good, since we gain every good by toil.

“If one accomplishes some good though with toil, the toil passes, but the good remains; if one does something dishonorable with pleasure, the pleasure passes, but the dishonor remains.”

Merely learning philosophical doctrine and listening to lectures, they state, will not do us any good unless we manage to interiorize the teachings and apply them to daily life.

You will earn the respect of all men if you begin by earning the respect of yourself.

It is not possible to live well today unless one thinks of it as his last.

Philosophy allows all human beings, from simple farmers to kings, to fulfill their social obligations.

I repeat, all this is the case, the person who is in training must strive to habituate himself not to love pleasure, not to avoid hardship, not to be infatuated with living, not to fear death, and in the case of goods or money not to place receiving above giving.

“Well, then,” said Musonius, “that being the case, in the matter of temperance and self-control, is it not much better to be self-controlled and temperate in all one’s actions than to be able to say what one ought to do?”