Quote of the day

"The payment for having done a virtuous deed is that you have done it." - Seneca

Via How to Give: An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving by James Romm 

Quote of the day

"Everyone helps themselves when they help another ... because the reward of all virtues is in the virtues themselves." - Seneca, "Epistle 81"

Via How to Give: An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving by James Romm

Quote of the day

"Here's the mark of great and good hearts: To seek good deeds for their own sake, not for the profits that flow from them, and to look for good people even after meeting bad ones." - Seneca

Via How to Give: Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving by James Romm

Quote of the day

"Wherever I go, I will be fine, because I was already fine here - not on account of the place but as a result of my principles, and I am going to take them with me. No one can take them away from me; they are my only possessions, irremovable ones that are enough for me wherever I am and whatever I do." - Epictetus

Via How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life by A. A. Long

Quote of the day

"If you ever find yourself looking for outside approval in order to curry favor, you can be sure that you have lost your way." - Epictetus

Via How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life by A. A. Long

Quote of the day

 "[B]y making happiness conditional on circumstance, we surrender autonomy and equanimity, and put ourselves at risk of failure and disappointment." - A. A. Long, How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life

Quote of the day

 "[Anger] betrays the nature of humankind, since that nature urges us to love, but anger urges us to hate; human nature bids us to help others, but anger, to harm." - Seneca, "On Anger"

Via How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management  by James Romm

Quote of the day

"If you are a good person, you stand in the same relation to your friend as to yourself, since a friend is another self. You value your friend's existence in the same way as you value your own, or almost." - Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Via How to Flourish: An Ancient Guide to Living Well by Susan Suavé Meyer

Something about this passage, a sentiment expressed thousands of years ago in a place and time so different than now yet speaking to the universality of human experience is just overwhelmingly heartwarming. It brings a tear to my eye.

Quote of the day

 "You see, whoever looks upon a true friend looks, in a sense, at an image of himself." - Cicero 

Via How to be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship by Philip Freeman

Quote of the day

 "[D]oing well is rare, praiseworthy, and splendid." - Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Via How to Flourish: An Ancient Guide to Living Well by Susan Suavé Meyer

Quote of the day

"You might describe the Nicomachean Ethics as a pagan version of the Beatitudes. Aristotle asks what makes a person happy or blessed, and he answers that a happy life is a flourishing one: a life in which we realize our full potential as rational, emotional, and social beings." - Susan Sauvé Meyer, How to Flourish: An Ancient Guide to Living Well