Occasional reflections on the wisdom of Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. More at https://massimopigliucci.com. Please consider supporting Stoic Meditations. (cover art by Marek Škrabák; original music by Ian Jolin-Rasmussen, www.jolinras.info). Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support
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The difference between pleasure and virtue
If pleasure and virtue were entirely inseparable, we should not see some things to be pleasant, but not honorable, and others most honorable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportReason is the only thing that will make you truly happy
That person is happy, whose reason recommends to them the whole posture of their affairs.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportThere is no happiness without truth
For no one can be styled happy who is beyond the influence of truth.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportDo away with hope and fear
A person may be called “happy” who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear: but rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, yet no one would call those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportFortune vs virtue
The highest good is a mind which despises the accidents of fortune, and takes pleasure in virtue.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportPursue the pleasures of life, in moderation
A happy life must also set due value upon all the things which adorn our lives, without over-estimating any one of them, and must be able to enjoy the bounty of Fortune without becoming her slave.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportDon't follow blindly what other say, no matter how famous they are
When I say “our opinion,” I do not bind myself to any one of the chiefs of the Stoic school, for I too have a right to form my own opinion.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportDon't go after fool's gold
These good things which men gaze at in wonder, which they crowd to see, which one points out to another with speechless admiration, are outwardly brilliant, but within are miseries to those who possess them.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportLiving by reason, not by imitation of others
Nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumor, living not by reason but by imitation of others.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/supportWhat is happiness anyway?
Seneca advises his brother, and us, not to listen to the random "shouts and clamors" of people, but to reflect carefully on what happiness is and how to achieve it.
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