Stoic Meditations

I do not mean to find fault with the accumulation of property, provided it hurts nobody, but unjust acquisition of it is always to be avoided.

We ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together.

If we truly want to become better human beings, Cicero counsels, we should avoid two common mistakes. Let's take a look at what they are, and reflect on whether we ourselves have sometimes committed them.

Cicero argues that there are four fundamental concerns of morality: truth; the organization of society (including our duties toward others); the development of our character; and doing everything while exercising temperance.

Nature by the power of reason associates man with man in the common bonds of speech and life; she also prompts men to meet in companies, to form public assemblies, and to take part in them themselves.

Consider if what you are doing is: (i) morally right; (ii) conducive to your happiness; and (iii) whether you may be rationalizing doing something wrong simply because it brings you comfort.

Every treatise on duty has two parts: one, dealing with the doctrine of the supreme good; the other with the practical rules by which daily life in all its bearings may be regulated.

Brave he surely cannot possibly be that counts pain the supreme evil, nor temperate he that holds pleasure to be the supreme good.

On the discharge of our duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life.

I know that there are some, whose wisdom is of a harsh rather than a brave character, who say that the sage never would mourn. They have never  been in the position of mourners,  otherwise their misfortune would have shaken their haughty philosophy out of them.

Prolong the remembrance of your brother by inserting some memoir of him among your other writings: for that is the only sort of monument that can be erected by man which no storm can injure, no time destroy.

For it is not human not to feel our sorrows, while it is unvirtuous not to bear them.

Fortune has not chosen you as the only person in the world to receive so severe a blow: there is no house in all the earth, and never has been one, that has not something to mourn for.

Turn yourself away from these thoughts which torment you, and look rather at those numerous and powerful sources of consolation which you possess: look at your excellent brothers, look at your wife and your son.

"But," you say, "he was taken away unexpectedly." Every man is deceived by his own willingness to believe what he wishes, and he chooses to forget that those whom he loves are mortal.

You need not think for how much longer you might have had him, but for how long you did have him. Nature gave him to you, as she gives others to other brothers, not as an absolute property, but as a loan.

If the dead retain no feeling whatever, my brother has escaped from all the troubles of life. What madness then for me never to cease grieving for one who will never grieve again?

At such times let literature repay to you the debt which your long and faithful love has laid upon it, let it claim you for its high priest and worshipper: at such times let Homer and Virgil be much in your company.

If your brother wishes you to be tortured with endless mourning, he does not deserve such affection; if he does not wish it, dismiss the grief which affects you both.

I would force some drops to flow from these eyes, exhausted as they are with weeping over my own domestic afflictions, were it likely to be of any service to you.