A lot of Stoic quote pages are unreliable.
An earlier version of this page was one of them. It mixed real passages with modern paraphrases, repeated the same few lines across several sections, and attributed sayings to Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Zeno without showing where they came from.
That is how fake quotes spread. A line sounds Stoic, another website repeats it, and soon the attribution feels true because it is familiar.
This version uses a simple standard. Every quotation below has an author, a work, a passage and a named translation. When the popular wording is a paraphrase, I say so. When no source has been located, it does not enter the main collection. The last section lists the famous lines that did not qualify.
There are 110 quotations here, drawn from 101 distinct cited passages. Three of those passages appear twice in two different translations, and I say which and why at each one, because watching the same Greek arrive in two Englishes is the fastest cure for treating any single wording as the words themselves. Six more are quoted twice because two separate sentences of the same passage earn their place. I am counting honestly rather than rounding to a nicer number, since a page about checking sources should be able to count its own contents.
The Stoics did not collect these sentences as decoration. They kept them ready for the moment judgement and action started to slip. Epictetus wanted his students' rules kept at hand, morning, noon and night (Discourses 4.4.39). A quotation you cannot recall under pressure is a quotation you do not really have.
If you already know what you need, go straight to the specialist guides: Stoic quotes on discipline · Stoic quotes on anxiety · Epictetus quotes by life problem · Marcus Aurelius quotes on love
On this page: Control and judgement · Impressions and the story you add · Adversity and training · Virtue and character · Anger and the passions · Other people · Desire, wealth and enough · Time, death and the present · Fate and acceptance · Freedom · The view from above · Quotes that are not actually Stoic · How to check a Stoic quote
A note on translations. Where a passage is marked trans. Ward Farnsworth, the wording is Farnsworth’s own rendering from The Practicing Stoic (2018) rather than an older public-domain translation. He says in his preface that in most cases he revised or redid the translations entirely. In most cases, not all: three of the Seneca lines I first took from him turned out to be word for word Gummere’s Loeb, so they are credited to Gummere here. Marking each one matters, because a page about verification that blurred translators would be a poor joke.
Control and judgement
“Some things in the world are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are our faculties of judgment, motivation, desire, and aversion, in short, everything that is our own doing. Not up to us are our body and property, our reputations, and our official positions, in short, everything that is not our own doing.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 1, trans. A. A. Long.
This is the opening of the Enchiridion and the sentence the whole system hangs on. Notice how short the first list is. Most of what we spend the day defending sits in the second.
“What should we do then? Make the best use of what is in our power, and treat the rest in accordance with its nature.”
Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.17, trans. Robin Hard. Read the chapter.
This is the Dichotomy of Control without the usual slogan. Epictetus does not tell you to ignore what is outside your control. He tells you to use your own part well and meet the rest as it is.
“What, then, is your own? The management of impressions.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 6, trans. A. A. Long.
This is more exact than saying you control your mind. Impressions arrive uninvited. Your work is what happens next: examine, assent, refuse or wait.
“Whoever wants to be free, therefore, should wish for nothing or avoid nothing that is up to other people. Failing that, one is bound to be a slave.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 14, trans. A. A. Long.
“Sickness is an impediment to the body, but not to the will unless the will wants to be impeded.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 9, trans. A. A. Long.
“You can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 19, trans. A. A. Long.
Read that one twice. It sounds like a trick until you notice it is a rule for choosing what to compete in.
“It’s only my leg you will chain, not even God can conquer my will.”
Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.23, trans. Robin Hard.
“Where is the good? In our choices. Where is the evil? In our choices. Where is neither of them? In those things we do not choose.”
Epictetus, Discourses 2.16.1, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“There is only one road to happiness, let this rule be at hand morning, noon, and night: stay detached from things that are not up to you.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.4.39, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“If you gape after externals, you will inevitably be forced up and down according to the will of your master. And who is your master? Whoever has power over the things you are trying to gain or avoid.”
Epictetus, Discourses 2.2.25, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Both death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being neither noble nor shameful. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Material things are indifferent; how we use them is not... He can act like people playing a board game. The game pieces are neither good nor bad, nor are the dice. How can I know what the next throw of the dice will be? But to use the throw carefully and skillfully, this belongs to me.”
Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.1 to 7, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
The board-game image is the one I come back to. It refuses both fatalism and control fantasy in the same breath. You do not choose the dice. You do choose the move.
Impressions and the story you add
“Men are disturbed, not by Things, but by the Principles and Notions, which they form concerning Things.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 5, trans. Elizabeth Carter. Read the text.
The event and the judgement are not the same thing. That gap is where Stoic practice begins. Name what happened, then name the story you added.
“It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinions about things.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 5, trans. A. A. Long.
Same sentence, two centuries apart in English. Worth seeing both, because the wording that circulates online is usually neither.
“Right now, then, make it your habit to tell every jarring thought or impression: ‘You are just an appearance and in no way the real thing.’”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 1, trans. A. A. Long.
“By developing these habits, you will not be carried away by your first impressions.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 10, trans. A. A. Long.
“Things themselves touch not the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul: but the soul turns and moves itself alone.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.19, trans. George Long.
“Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.22, trans. George Long. Read Book XII.
Marcus is not claiming that the outside world becomes calm. He is describing what changes when he stops adding a verdict to it.
“What injures you is not people who are rude or aggressive but your opinion that they are injuring you.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 20, trans. A. A. Long.
“Take away your opinion about it, and ‘I have been harmed’ is taken away. Take away ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.7, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“‘His ship is lost.’ What has happened? His ship is lost. ‘He has been led off to prison.’ What has happened? He has been led off to prison. The notion that he fares badly, each man adds on his own.”
Epictetus, Discourses 3.8.5, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“‘I have a headache.’ Do not add ‘Alas!’ ‘I have an earache.’ Do not add ‘Alas!’ I’m not saying that you cannot groan, but don’t groan inside.”
Epictetus, Discourses 1.19.19, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
This is the one that stops it becoming denial. Epictetus is not banning the groan. He is asking you not to let the groan become a verdict about your life.
“Say nothing more to yourself than what first appearances report... I see that my child is sick. I see that much; but that he is in danger, I do not see.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.49, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Like a bowl of water, so is the soul; like the light falling on the water, so are the impressions the soul receives. When the water is disturbed, the light also seems to be disturbed; yet it is not disturbed.”
Epictetus, Discourses 3.4.20, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Pay attention to your impressions, watch over them without sleeping, for what you guard is no small thing: self-respect and fidelity and self-possession, a mind free from emotion, pain, fear, disturbance, in a word, freedom.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.3.7, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“To someone with jaundice, honey tastes bitter; to one with rabies, water becomes terrifying; to small children a little ball is a wonderful thing. Why then am I angry?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.57, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“So remember this above all, to strip away the disorder of things and to see what is in each of them: you will learn that nothing in them is frightening but the fear itself.”
Seneca, Epistles 24.13 to 14, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
Adversity and training
“The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck.”
Epictetus, Discourses 1.24.1, trans. Robin Hard. Read the chapter.
As a jiu-jitsu metaphor this lands immediately. A hard training partner does not create your missing skill. He exposes it. Epictetus treats difficulty the same way.
“A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner, and my accuser is my sparring partner. He trains me in patience, civility and even temper.”
Epictetus, Discourses 3.20.9, trans. Robin Hard.
“So is it possible to benefit from these circumstances? Yes, from every circumstance, even abuse and slander.”
Epictetus, Discourses 3.20.9, trans. Robin Hard.
“That which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.20, trans. George Long. Read Book V.
This is the source behind the modern phrase “the obstacle is the way”. The point is not that every obstacle is secretly good. The mind can alter its approach and turn the obstruction into material for a different action.
“Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.49, trans. George Long. Read Book IV.
Firm does not mean numb. The water still hits. Marcus is telling himself not to let each impact decide his character.
“Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.18, trans. George Long.
I want to flag this one. Read as a promise that you can cope with anything, it is not true and it is not kind. Read as Marcus talking himself out of the extra layer of this should not be happening to me, it is useful. Take the second reading.
“Why wouldn’t I prefer that war not break out? But if it should come, my hope is to nobly bear the wounds, the starvation, and all else that it must bring with it. I am not so mad as to want to be ill; but if I must be ill, my hope is that I do nothing immoderate or weak. It is not hardships that are desirable, but the courage by which to endure them.”
Seneca, Epistles 67.4, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
Seneca does not glorify suffering. He makes the distinction explicit in the same breath: hardship is not desirable, the courage is.
“Whenever you are about to start on some activity, remind yourself what the activity is like.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 4, trans. A. A. Long.
The whole of premeditatio malorum in one line, and notably free of drama.
“It is a shame then that ignorance and conceit should be stronger than wisdom.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.18, trans. George Long.
Virtue and character
“If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude... turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.6, trans. George Long. Read Book III.
The four qualities here are the Stoic virtues: wisdom, justice, courage and temperance. Marcus is asking what could deserve more of him than character.
“Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.59, trans. George Long.
“Virtue alone is elevated and lofty. Nothing is great unless it’s also at peace.”
Seneca, On Anger 1.21, trans. James Romm.
“Virtue, he said, is not simply theoretical knowledge, but it is practical application as well, just like the arts of medicine and music.”
Musonius Rufus, Lecture VI, “On Training”, trans. Cora E. Lutz. Read the lecture.
Musonius gets to the central problem. You can understand a principle and remain unable to use it. Philosophy, like music, needs reps.
“Never call yourself a Philosopher; nor talk a great deal among the Unlearned about Theorems; but act conformably to them.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 46, trans. Elizabeth Carter. Read the text.
This is the accurate source behind the popular paraphrase “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” Epictetus tells his student to let the action carry the claim.
“Be satisfied, then, simply to be a philosopher, and if you want people to think of you that way as well, appear so to yourself, and that will be sufficient.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 23, trans. A. A. Long.
“But a fully educated person blames no one, neither himself nor anyone else.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 5, trans. A. A. Long.
Note the second half. Stoicism gets sold as relentless self-audit. Epictetus puts self-blame and other-blame in the same bin.
“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”
Seneca, Moral Letters 71.3, trans. Richard M. Gummere. Read the letter.
“The perfection of moral character consists in this: to spend each day as if it were the last, to be neither agitated nor numb, and not to pretend.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.69, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Neither agitated nor numb” is the whole target, and it is the half of Stoicism the internet keeps dropping.
Anger and the passions
“Some wise men have called anger a brief madness.”
Seneca, On Anger 1.1, trans. James Romm.
“It is best to repel instantly the first prickings of anger, to stamp out its very seedlings, to take pains not to be drawn in.”
Seneca, On Anger 1.8, trans. James Romm.
Seneca is precise about sequence here. The first prickings are not the failure. What you do in the second after them is the practice. More on that in how to let go of anger.
“There is no emotion more eager for vengeance than anger, and for that very reason, none less suited to the taking of vengeance.”
Seneca, On Anger 1.12, trans. James Romm.
“Reason itself, to which the reins are entrusted, stays potent only so long as it’s kept apart from the passions; if it mingles and pollutes itself with them, it can no longer restrain that which it formerly could have rebuffed.”
Seneca, On Anger 1.7, trans. James Romm.
“And we must not even suppose that anger contributes in any way to greatness. That’s not greatness but mere swelling.”
Seneca, On Anger 1.20, trans. James Romm.
“Mere swelling” is Romm’s phrase and it is perfect. Anger feels like size.
“Thus it was that Socrates said to his slave, ‘I would beat you if I weren’t angry.’”
Seneca, On Anger 1.15, trans. James Romm.
“We’re just wicked people living among wicked people. Only one thing can give us peace, and that’s a pact of mutual leniency.”
Seneca, On Anger, final segment, trans. James Romm.
“Draw further back, and laugh.”
Seneca, On Anger 3.37, trans. James Romm.
Other people
“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1, trans. George Long. Read Book II.
“We are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1, trans. George Long.
Those two lines are the same passage, in that order. Marcus prepares to meet irritating people and then refuses to use their behaviour as permission to become antisocial. Cooperation is the standard precisely when it is difficult.
“Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then, or bear with them.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.59, trans. George Long. Read Book VIII.
There is some steel in this one. Help if you can. If you cannot change the person, stop demanding that they become someone else before you behave well.
“Every Thing hath two Handles; the one, by which it may be borne; the other, by which it cannot.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 43, trans. Elizabeth Carter. Read the text.
Epictetus uses a conflict with a brother. You can grasp the situation through the injury, or through the relationship and the kind of person you mean to be.
“If people take a bath in a hurry, don’t criticize them for their bathing, but say that they do it hurriedly... Until you know their reasons, how do you know whether they acted wrongly.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 45, trans. A. A. Long.
“Whenever people treat you badly or criticize you, remember that they are only doing and saying what they think is appropriate for them.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 42, trans. A. A. Long.
“Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.”
Seneca, Epistles 47.11, trans. Richard M. Gummere. Read the letter.
Seneca wrote this in a Roman slave society, and he owned people. The surrounding letter is more radical than the isolated line, and the gap between what he wrote and how he lived is part of what makes him worth reading carefully rather than reverently.
“No good man grieves or groans, no one wails, no one turns pale and trembles and says, ‘How will he receive me, how will he listen to me?’ Slave, he will act as he sees fit. Why do you care about other people’s business?”
Epictetus, Discourses 2.13.17, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“I am a citizen of the world.”
Socrates, quoted by Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.1, trans. Robin Hard.
Desire, wealth and enough
“Freedom is attained not by satisfying desires but by removing them.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.175, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“It is not one who has little, but one who craves more, who is poor.”
Seneca, Epistles 2.6, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“You will learn the truth by experience: the things that people value highly and try hardest to get do them no good once they have them... then they do get them, and the heat of their desires is the same, their agitation is the same, their disgust with what they possess is the same, and their wish for what they don’t have is the same.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.174, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“At last, then, away with all these treacherous goods, better when hoped for than when attained! If there were anything of substance in them, they eventually would bring satisfaction. As it is, they are a drink that makes you more thirsty.”
Seneca, Epistles 15.11, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Who was ever satisfied, after attainment, with that which loomed up large as he prayed for it?”
Seneca, Epistles 118.6, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“No one can have whatever he wants. What he can do is not want what he doesn’t have, and cheerfully enjoy what comes his way.”
Seneca, Epistles 123.3, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Don’t imagine having things that you don’t have. Rather, pick the best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn’t have them.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
This is the most immediately usable line on the page. It takes about ninety seconds and it works on almost anything you have stopped noticing.
“One man prays: ‘Help me go to bed with that woman.’ You pray: ‘Help me not to lust after going to bed with her.’... Another: ‘How shall I not lose my little son?’ You: ‘How shall I not be afraid to lose him?’ Turn your prayers this way, and see what happens.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.40, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“I do not forbid you to possess them, but I want to bring you to the point at which you possess them without fear.”
Seneca, Epistles 18.13, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
Seneca was one of the richest men in Rome. Read him on wealth with that in view, and the passage gets more interesting rather than less.
“It is the superfluous things for which we sweat... That which is enough is right at hand.”
Seneca, Epistles 4.11, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“He who has need of riches feels fear on their account. But no man enjoys a blessing that brings anxiety. He is always trying to add a little more. While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it.”
Seneca, Epistles 14.18, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“It has not come yet; don’t let your appetite run ahead, but wait till the portion reaches you.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 15, trans. A. A. Long.
Time, death and the present
“Thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.5, trans. George Long. Read Book II.
This is not a demand for panic. Marcus continues by naming the qualities the act should keep: freedom from carelessness, hypocrisy and resentment.
“Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.33, trans. George Long.
“Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get out.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.3, trans. George Long.
“Set before your eyes every day death and exile and everything else that looks terrible, especially death. Then you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 21, trans. A. A. Long.
This is memento mori as a corrective to pettiness. Epictetus does not ask the student to brood. He asks what becomes too small to govern you once death is kept in view.
“For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14, trans. George Long. Read Book II.
We do not lose the future because we never possessed it.
“Every man lives only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.10, trans. George Long.
“See that thou secure this present time to thyself.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.44, trans. George Long.
“Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.56, trans. George Long.
“No man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14, trans. George Long.
“Who can you show me that places any value on their time, who knows the worth of each day, who understands that they are dying daily? For we are mistaken when we see death ahead of us; the greater part of it has happened already.”
Seneca, Epistles 1.2, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
Seneca’s first letter is about ownership. Money returns. Time does not.
“We do not suddenly fall on death, but advance toward it by slight degrees. We die every day... It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that has flowed out already.”
Seneca, Epistles 24.19, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“It is with life as with a play: what matters is not how long it is, but how good. It makes no difference at what point you stop. Leave off where you choose; just be sure to give it a good ending.”
Seneca, Epistles 77.20, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.”
Seneca, Epistles 22.17, trans. Richard M. Gummere. Read the letter.
“What is death? A mask to frighten children. Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite.”
Epictetus, Discourses 2.1.17, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery. He is above any power, and certainly beyond it.”
Seneca, Epistles 26.10, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“We must make ready for death before we make ready for life.”
Seneca, Epistles 61.4, trans. Richard M. Gummere. Read the letter.
“Nothing will give you so much help toward moderation as the frequent thought that life is short and that the little we have is uncertain.”
Seneca, Epistles 114.27, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Never say about anything, ‘I have lost it’; but say, ‘I have returned it.’ Has your little child died? ‘It has been returned.’”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 11, trans. A. A. Long.
This one is Epictetus and the citation holds. It is also the hardest line in Stoicism to use well, and I have watched it quoted at grieving people as though it were a solution. It was written for rehearsal in advance, not for consolation in the hour. Handle accordingly.
Fate and acceptance
“Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.57, trans. George Long. Read Book VII.
The phrase amor fati is Nietzsche’s, not ancient Stoic vocabulary. The practice is here: stop treating reality as a clerical error and ask what living well inside it requires.
“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 8, trans. Elizabeth Carter. Read the text.
One caution if you follow the link. The Wikisource transcription of Carter prints “as you with” and “but with them” here. That is a long-s misreading of wiſh. Carter’s word is wish, confirmed against the Everyman reprint.
“Don’t ask for things to happen as you would like them to, but wish them to happen as they actually do, and you will be all right.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 8, trans. A. A. Long.
Same passage, two translators, and the difference is instructive. Carter’s “you will go on well” and Long’s “you will be all right” are doing slightly different work.
“Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.23, trans. George Long. Read Book IV.
You do not need to share his providential physics to use the move. The next event does not require your permission before it becomes the next event.
“Conduct me, Jove, and Thou, O Destiny, / Where-ever Your Decrees have fix’d my Station. / I follow chearfully.”
Cleanthes, quoted by Epictetus, Enchiridion 53, trans. Elizabeth Carter. Read the text.
The omitted continuation says he will still follow if he resists, but badly. The event may be fixed. The manner of meeting it is not.
“Lead me, O Zeus, and you, O Destiny, / Wherever you have ordained for me. / I will follow unflinching.”
Cleanthes, quoted by Epictetus, Enchiridion 53, trans. A. A. Long.
That is the third and last of the deliberate two-translator pairs on this page. Carter’s “I follow chearfully” and Long’s “I will follow unflinching” are rendering the same Greek verb, and they are not saying quite the same thing about the mood you are meant to bring.
“Keep in mind that you are an actor in a play that is just the way the producer wants it to be... Your job is to put on a splendid performance of the role you have been given, but selecting the role is the job of someone else.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 17, trans. A. A. Long.
The basis of Stoic role ethics, and a more demanding idea than it first looks.
Freedom
“He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.1, trans. W. A. Oldfather.
“The unhampered man, who finds things ready to hand as he wants them, is free... And who is unhampered? The man who fixes his aim on nothing that is not his own.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.128 to 129, trans. W. A. Oldfather.
“Then he becomes a slave as he enters the senate, then he serves in the handsomest and sleekest slavery.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.40, trans. W. A. Oldfather.
Epictetus had been a slave. When he uses the word he is not reaching for a metaphor, and the senator he is addressing would have known it.
“Study these things, these judgements, these arguments... if you wish to be free... If not, you will be a slave among slaves; even if you are consul ten thousand times.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.170, trans. W. A. Oldfather.
“Diogenes was free... because he had cast off all the handles of slavery, and there was no way in which a person could get close and lay hold of him to enslave him.”
Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.152, trans. W. A. Oldfather.
“Show me who is not a slave. One is a slave to lust, another to avarice, another to ambition, and all are slaves to fear... No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.”
Seneca, Epistles 47.17, trans. Ward Farnsworth.
“Only the wise man is free, and every foolish man is a slave.” (Solum sapientem esse liberum, et omnem stultum servum.)
Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum, Paradox V, developed at §33 to 34. The Latin is given above; the English here is an editorial gloss rather than a named published translation, and I have flagged it as such rather than invent an attribution.
The view from above
“Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.30, trans. George Long.
The core of the view from above.
“The whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3, trans. George Long.
“All the present time is a point in eternity. All things are little, changeable, perishable.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.36, trans. George Long.
“How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal!”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.32, trans. George Long.
A caution worth stating. Used badly, this exercise flattens everything into meaninglessness, which is nihilism wearing a toga. Marcus uses it to shrink his irritation, not his obligations. If it leaves you less willing to act, you have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Stoic quotes that are not actually Stoic
The internet has a second Stoic canon: neat sentences that sound ancient and cannot be found in the ancient texts.
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” No standard translation of the Meditations contains this sentence. It is a modern paraphrase of the control theme, closer to Epictetus than Marcus. Full record.
“What we do in life echoes in eternity.” This is dialogue from Gladiator (2000), spoken by Maximus. It is not a line by the historical Marcus Aurelius. Full record.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Not in the Meditations. It is a relativist reading of 2.15, which runs: “Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true” (trans. George Long). Marcus is quoting a Cynic and qualifying him in the same breath. The Stoics were not relativists, and the popular version turns a remark about judgement into one about truth.
“No man is free who is not master of himself.” Routinely attributed to Epictetus, but not located in the Discourses or Enchiridion. His genuine argument is at Enchiridion 14: freedom comes from wishing for nothing that is up to other people.
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” A prettified paraphrase. Robin Hard’s wording at Discourses 3.23.1 is: “First, tell yourself what you want to be, then act your part accordingly.”
The steersman or helm line, often given as Epictetus, Discourses 4.12. That chapter, “On attention”, contains no such nautical aphorism. Epictetus does use a boat image at Enchiridion 7, but the popular epigram is not his.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” Genuine Seneca, and the popular English is Gummere’s own Loeb wording rather than somebody’s invention. What goes missing is the first half of the sentence. Epistles 13.4 in full: “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality” (trans. Richard M. Gummere). Farnsworth renders the same clause “we suffer more often in conjecture than in reality”, which sits closer to Seneca’s opinione. The argument then divides into three faults: we exaggerate the sorrow, we invent it, or we get ahead of it. Full record.
“He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.” Commonly miscited to Letters 91. The premeditation formulation is Letters 98.8. Letter 91, on the fire at Lyons, treats a related theme but is a different passage. Two passages, two wordings, routinely blended into one.
For maintained verdicts, corrected citations and the evidence behind these checks, use the Stoic Quote Source Audit. Its first full investigation examines the false Epictetus line “He who laughs at himself”.
How to check a Stoic quote
Look for three things.
First, a work and a passage number. “Marcus Aurelius” is an attribution. “Meditations 5.20” is a trail you can follow.
Second, a named translation. Ancient texts do not arrive in modern English on their own. If the wording changes across websites but nobody names the translator, you are probably looking at a paraphrase. This is also why three passages appear twice on this page in two translations: seeing the variation is the fastest cure for treating any single English wording as the words themselves.
Third, the source text. Search the book, not another collection of quotes. If no one can show you the passage, hold the attribution lightly.
That is the whole method. It takes about two minutes and it would have prevented most of what circulates.
One line, one week
A hundred quotations is a hundred more than anyone needs.
Pick one. Keep it visible for a week. The point is not to collect more ideas; you almost certainly have enough. It is to catch one of them at the moment you would normally forget it, which is the only moment that has ever mattered.
If you want a structure for that first week, the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge gives you one short exercise a day. The quote is the reminder. The exercise is the rep.
For a modern philosophical counterpoint, read Alain de Botton’s one-liners on human nature.