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Stoic Fundamentals

The library

Stoic quotes you can actually check

34 passages from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca. Every one is quoted from a public-domain translation, verified against that edition, and given with the exact place to find it.

Why a citation matters

A Stoic quotation on the internet usually arrives with a name attached and nothing else. No work, no book-and-section, no translator. That is a problem, because the ancient texts exist in English only through translators, and translators disagree. Two translations of the same line can carry different meanings, and some of the most circulated lines are not in the originals in any recognisable form.

Every quotation here names its work, its locus, its translator, and the year. You can look up any of them. That is the whole standard, and it is a low bar that almost nothing on the internet clears.

By author

  • Marcus Aurelius121–180 AD

    Roman emperor, and the least likely Stoic author: the Meditations were a private notebook, written to himself, never meant to be read by anyone.

    14 passages · George Long (1862)

  • Epictetusc. 50–135 AD

    Born enslaved, later lame, and the most quoted teacher in Stoicism. He wrote nothing himself: the Discourses are his student Arrian’s notes.

    15 passages · Elizabeth Carter (1758) · W. A. Oldfather (1925)

  • Senecac. 4 BC–65 AD

    Playwright, statesman, and the wealthiest of the Stoics — a man whose life sat awkwardly beside his philosophy, and who knew it.

    4 passages · Aubrey Stewart (1889)

By idea

  • The dichotomy of control

    • Of things, some are in our power and others not. In our power are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever are our own actions. Not in our power are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

      Epictetus · Enchiridion 1tr. Elizabeth Carter, 1758 · public domain

    • Epictetus, had it been possible I should have made both this paltry body and this small estate of thine free and unhampered. But as it is—let it not escape thee—this body is not thine own, but only clay cunningly compounded. Yet since I could not give thee this, we have given thee a certain portion of ourself, this faculty of choice and refusal, of desire and aversion, or, in a word, the faculty which makes use of external impressions; if thou care for this and place all that thou hast therein, thou shalt never be thwarted, never hampered, shalt not groan, shalt not blame, shalt not flatter any man.

      Epictetus · Discourses 1.1tr. W. A. Oldfather, 1925 · public domain

    • Neutral (neither good nor evil, that is) are all those things which neither benefit nor harm a man: such as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, fair fame and noble birth, and their opposites, death, disease, pain, ugliness, weakness, poverty, ignominy, low birth, and the like.

      Diogenes Laertius · Lives 7.102tr. R. D. Hicks, 1925 · public domain

  • Amor fati

    • Require not Things to happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen; and you will go on well.

      Epictetus · Enchiridion 8tr. Elizabeth Carter, 1758 · public domain

    • Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?

      Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 7.57tr. George Long, 1862 · public domain

    • Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it.

      Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 10.5tr. George Long, 1862 · public domain

  • Memento mori

    • Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

      Epictetus · Enchiridion 21tr. Elizabeth Carter, 1758 · public domain

    • Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things which nature wills.

      Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 9.3tr. George Long, 1862 · public domain

    • The termination of life for every man is no evil… since it is seasonable.

      Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 12.23tr. George Long, 1862 · public domain

The editions

One translation is locked per work and used consistently, so a passage always reads the same way here.

Meditations
George Long, 1862
Enchiridion
Elizabeth Carter, 1758
Discourses
W. A. Oldfather, 1925
Seneca
Aubrey Stewart, 1889
Lives
R. D. Hicks, 1925

All are in the public domain, which is why they can be reproduced here in full. Modern translations still in copyright are not quoted anywhere on this site or in the books.