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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Daily stoic quotes

Michel Daw, in my last post on a random Stoic quote, left a comment referring to his blog Words of the Ancient Wise. It has about three quotes on a theme every day. Daily quotes are very useful. As much as we may read Stoic or other philosophy, daily life is always there, and merely living as normal can form bad habits.

Stoic philosophy is unnatural. I don't think the Stoics would agree with that statement, since they present their philosophy as merely acting in accordance with nature.  The fact that they had to formulate and propagate this philosophy should have clued them in to its unnatural nature. Because of its conflict with our natural desires, we have to constantly remind ourselves about it.

This is why the daily reading is important. Also why the daily review is important. Seeing as how the daily review advocated by Seneca happens at bedtime, the daily reading should probably happen in the morning. Other activities can take the place of reading. Marcus Aurelius said his little speech to himself every morning, reminding himself that he will face opposition, setbacks, stupidity, etc throughout the day. That probably works to much the same effect.

2 comments:

  1. Michel's blog post for today is an appropriate comment on your post. :) Synchronicity at work.

    http://www.livingthestoiclife.org/2012/01/trite-or-true-on-quoting-stoics.html

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  2. Cool, that's a great pair of blogs you guys have. Really good stuff.

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