"Stoic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... LIFE.—At the close of the fourth century before Christ there arose the schools of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics. In them we seem to find a somewhat new conception of philosophy—philosophy appears as chiefly a guide to life. The Stoic emphasizes the necessity of living "according to nature," and dwells upon the character of the wise man; the Epicurean furnishes certain selfish maxims for getting through life as pleasantly as possible; ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... A devoted lad who went with me on all my journeys; a gallant Flemish boy whom I genuinely liked and who returned the compliment; a born stoic, punctilious on principle, habitually hardworking, rarely startled by life's surprises, very skillful with his hands, efficient in his every duty, and despite his having a name that means "counsel," never giving advice— not ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... received a visit from a certain magnificent orator going to Rome on a lawsuit, who wished to learn from the stoic something of his philosophy. Epictetus received his visitor coolly, not believing in his sincerity. "You will only criticise my style," said he; "not really wishing to learn principles."—"Well, but," said the orator, "if I attend to that sort of thing; ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... monumental bronze unchanged his look: A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook; Train'd from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier, The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook Impassive—fearing but the shame of fear— stoic of the woods—a ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... imperfect sketch of this extraordinary couple; for everything is here lowered instead of being heightened. Those who would see them set forth in more lively colors, and with the proper ornaments, may read the descriptions of the Furies in some of the classical poets, or of the Stoic philosophers in the works ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... wise man should never guess, but only say what he knows. Philopator, wishing to tease him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be handed to him, and when Sphaerus bit one of them he laughed at him for guessing that it was real fruit. But the stoic answered that there are many cases in which our actions must be guided by what seems probable. None of the works of Sphaerus have come down to us. Eratosthenes, of whom we have before spoken, was librarian of the museum during this reign; and Ptolemy, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... whose sullen cheer, Compared to me, made me in lightness sound; Who, stoic-like, in cloudy hue appear; Who silence force to make their words more dear; Whose eyes seem chaste, because they ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... aim of all our work should be the harmonious growth of our whole being," says Froeebel. "Know thyself," quoth Epictetus, the Stoic, and, knowing thyself, grow strong of mind, self-centered and self-possessed. "Know thyself," reiterates the modern disciple of Delsarte, since only by knowledge of self can be developed the real ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... of Tanguy about 1886. It is said to belong to Rodin. It represents the naive man with his irregular features and placid expression of a stoic; not a distinguished face, but unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour better than himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may be remembered by those who knew him—and also a few future historians of the futility of things ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse—acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... took in educating himself to the profession of oratory. He studied the civil law under [b] Mucius Scaevola; he was instructed in the various systems of philosophy, by Philo [c] of the academic school, and by Diodorus the stoic; and though Rome, at that time, abounded with the best professors, he made a voyage to Greece [d], and thence to Asia, in order to enrich his mind with every branch of learning. Hence that store of knowledge which appears ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... favourers and defenders at the time, and may still be so, without either profaneness or levity) is a metaphysical and logical commentary on some of the most beautiful and striking texts of Scripture. Mr. Godwin is a mixture of the Stoic and of the Christian philosopher. To break the force of the vulgar objections and outcry that have been raised against the Modern Philosophy, as if it were a new and monstrous birth in morals, it may be worth noticing, that ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the time, which are to be found in the writings of the Emperor Julian. Pedant and apostate as he was, he devoted his short life to one great idea, the restoration of the Roman Empire to what it had been (as he fancied) in the days of the virtuous stoic Emperors of the second century. He found his dream a dream, owing to the dead heap of frivolity, sensuality, brutality, utter unbelief, not merely in the dead Pagan gods whom he vainly tried to restore, but in any god at ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... ridiculous interpretation of Homer, are entirely in the spirit of Plato (compare Protag; Ion; Apol.). The characters are ill-drawn. Socrates assumes the 'superior person' and preaches too much, while Alcibiades is stupid and heavy-in-hand. There are traces of Stoic influence in the general tone and phraseology of the Dialogue (compare opos melesei tis...kaka: oti pas aphron mainetai): and the writer seems to have been acquainted with the 'Laws' of Plato (compare Laws). An incident from the Symposium is rather ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... philosophy and lofty scorn mark their respective pages. The satire of Horace was playful and good natured. His arrows were always dipped in oil. He was a fine specimen of an accomplished gentleman. His sentiments were evidently modified by his associates. He was an Epicurean and a stoic by turns. He commended and ridiculed both sects. He practiced economy and praised liberality. He lived temperate, and sang the praises of festivity. He was the favorite of the court and paid for its patronage in compliments and panegyrics, unsurpassed in delicacy of sentiment and beauty of expression. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... I put in part of it wandering about with Partial, hunting for squirrels, which he took much delight in chasing up trees. Again, I lay for a time reading one of my favorite authors, the wise stoic, Epictetus, tarrying over ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... morals or just opinions upon the relations to man of the several divinities, all this was resigned to the teaching of nature; and for any polemic functions the teaching was resigned to the professional philosophers—academic, peripatetic, stoic, etc. By religion it ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the parts of French tragedies; now their hearts beat again in the single thought of freeing themselves by a Catonian death from a life full of disappointment, confusion, and suffering. But when the excited and nervous sister fell seriously ill, Frederick forgot all his Stoic philosophy, and clinging fast to life with a passionate tenderness, worried and mourned over her who was the dearest to him of his family. When she died, his poignant grief was perhaps increased by the feeling that he had interfered in too tragic a manner with a tender woman's ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... San Francisco earthquake, but never got quite used to rocks descending from a source altogether out of sight. Small wonder, after all! Later we were to experience more of this thing, and on a scale to startle a stoic! ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of Rome's imperial sage, Tersest of synonyms for self-control, Paramount precept of the Stoic's age, Noblest of mottoes for the lofty soul,— Would thou wert writ in characters of light, At every turn to greet my reverent gaze, And bid me face life's evils, calm, upright, Unspoiled alike by calumny or praise! With all our ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... contained about a million and a half of inhabitants. It was well governed and sumptuously adorned. A real belief in the homely vulgar gods of their forefathers had declined among educated people, and the humane principles of Stoic philosophy were instilling a new regard for the less fortunate classes of mankind. Strange foreign devotions were satisfying some of the yearnings which found no nourishment in the hard old Roman paganism. Men who took no interest ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... seems to me to have been too good a Stoic to be entirely a good Christian; or rather (to put it more correctly) to feel, like the rest of us, that he was a bad Christian. . . . There was much more in him of the Scotch Puritan than of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the matter, he seemed to gain stoic energy. Now he went back to his dressing room, and pulled out to the veranda a couple of worn portmanteaux. Into these he put a variety of personal belongings. Among them, pictures from the walls, and old photographs in frames that had been on the dressing table. It was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... assume the same loftiness of spirit in respect of the prison's entity (substance), if one may use the term, and the sight of myself, every morning when I awoke, in the hands of my enemies made me perceive that I was anything rather than a stoic." The Archbishop of Paris had just died, and the dignity passed to his coadjutor; as the price of his release, Mazarin demanded his resignation. The clergy of Paris were highly indignant; Cardinal de Retz was removed to the castle ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and Cato sent off all his party by sea, and remained alone with his son and a few of his friends, not to face the conqueror, but to die by his own sword ere he came, as the Romans had learned from Stoic philosophy ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... last, upon his throne, By subjects of his own, Strong through his weakness grown. The horse his head saluted with a kick; The wolf snapp'd at his royal hide; The ox, too, gored him in the side; The unhappy lion, sad and sick, Could hardly growl, he was so weak. In uncomplaining, stoic pride, He waited for the hour of fate, Until the ass approach'd his gate; Whereat, 'This is too much,' he saith; 'I willingly would yield my breath; But, ah! thy kick ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... appreciation of the stoic indifference of the then West it was a slight incident which overthrew. One cowboy, "Slim" Rawley, had a particularly vicious broncho, which none but he had ever been able to control, and which in consequence, he prized as the apple of his eye. During his temporary ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... full—and we know also that Caesar nobly took the praise in good part, as coming from Cicero, and answered it in an Anti-Cato, in which he stated his reasons for differing from Cicero. We can understand how Caesar should have shown that the rigid Stoic was not a man likely to be of service ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and were honoured in times of public difficulty and danger. The practice of astrology came from the Chaldeans, and was introduced into Greece in the third century before Christ. It was accepted by all classes, but specially by the Stoic philosophers. In 319 B.C., Cornelius Hispallus banished the Chaldeans from Rome, and ordered them to leave Italy within ten days. In 33 B.C., they were again banished by Marcus Agrippa, and Augustus also issued an edict against them. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... were full two hundred strong, probably, a war party, in search of adventure, intending to fall unawares on some neighbouring tribes. By the middle fire, in the centre of a group of some twenty savages, were Jane and Edward, looking pale and wearied. A little behind them, on the ground, with stoic-like indifference, sat five Crows, the remainder of their captors; but now like themselves prisoners. Evidently, their fate was being decided upon. As cautiously as they went the scouts returned to the pine grove, and decided to make an immediate attack for the recovery of ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... they afford a grateful protection from the heat of the sun, as well as a shelter from the rain. Seats were also provided where the loungers might rest, and the philosophers and rhetoricians sit down for intellectual conversation. The "Stoic" school of philosophy derived its name from the circumstance that its founder, Zeno, used to meet and converse with his disciples under one of these porticoes,—the Stoa Poecile. These porticoes were not only built in the most magnificent ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... growing excited, full of anguish, and superb. It was his bereavement, his heart wound, which thus exasperated him, the great blow which had felled him for a moment, but against which he again rose erect, defying grief, and stubborn in his stoic belief in an omnipotent God, who was the master of mankind, and reserved felicity to those whom He selected. Again, however, he made an effort to calm himself, and resumed in a more gentle voice: "At all events the fold is always open, my dear son, and here you are back in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... back to the Rue de Normandie in perfect silence; that sudden flash of joy had thrown a light on the extent of the disease which was consuming Pons. Oh, that a man so truly noble, so disinterested, so great in feeling, should have such a weakness!... This was the thought that struck the stoic Schmucke dumb with amazement. He grew woefully sad, for he began to see that there was no help for it; he must even renounce the pleasure of seeing "his goot Bons" opposite him at the dinner-table, for ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... is meet that we pay our tribute to departed kindred, in falling tears. These are not selfish; neither is the sorrow they express, a sin, nor an evidence of filial distrust, or of reluctant submission to the will of God. The unfeeling stoic may regard it such; but he outrages the generous impulses of humanity. Undefiled religion does not aim to cancel natural affection. Our piety, if genuine, will not make us guilty of crimes against ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... at least I will hope it is a reverent one: but till we can find something corresponding to what we conceive of the Divine Mind in any class of phenomena, it is perhaps better not to talk about them at all, but observe a stoic "epoche," waiting for more light, and yet confessing that our own laughter is uncontrollable, and therefore we hope not unworthy of us, at many a strange creature and strange doing which we meet, from the highest ape to the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... between the pagan and Christian conceptions of life. In self-dependence, in personal pride, in her desire to refer all things to the arbitrament of reason, Julie, whatever her practice, was theoretically a stoic and a pagan. But Delafield's personality embodied another "must," another "ought," of a totally different kind. And it was a "must" which, in a great crisis of her life, she also had been forced to obey. There was the thought which stung and humiliated. And the fact was irreparable; ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I say from my heart, that we were more natural, that a greater frankness and directness marked our intercourse with one another, that the shams and pretences of so much of our social life were made away with, that our lives were more open and free! The grand old Stoic maxim had it thus: Live in accordance with nature. Yes, but with what nature? No thinker, from Socrates to Kant, from Buddha to Hegel, ever had a doubt but that man's nature was twofold, and that the law of reason must be supreme in him. Let an animal live for sense; it is its nature; but ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and pamphlets, against freethinking; I am resolved to disarm them of his authority. You must know, his philosophical works are generally in dialogues, where people are brought in disputing against one another: Now the priests when they see an argument to prove a God, offered perhaps by a Stoic, are such knaves or blockheads, to quote it as if it were Cicero's own; whereas Cicero was so noble a freethinker, that he believed nothing at all of the matter, nor ever shews the least inclination to favour ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the sofa, breathless with expectation. Leaf after leaf was turned; not a smile, not a single encouraging word! The young poet had good reason to regard the battle as lost. At last the pipe, the bottle, and the book were finished. Then the merciless Stoic rose and began to dress, and the following little exclamation escaped him: 'That is, the devil take me, the best book I have read ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington. Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such hate and resentment that Washington elevated his hands an inch. The President sat like a stoic, with a tornado on one side of him and a growling Vesuvius on the other, and exhibited an impartiality, in spite of the fact that Jefferson daily betrayed his hostility to the Administration, which revealed but another of his superhuman ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Governor, laughing, though he looked a little vexed. "If I hadn't the control of a stoic, daughter, to say nothing of the patience of Job, do you think I'd be able to listen calmly to his tirades? Why, he wants to pull the Government to pieces for his pleasure," then he pinched her cheek and added, smiling, "Oh, you sly puss, why ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the indiscriminating Stoic who cuts away from the soul all passions and desires, good as well as bad, even to the most innocent wishes. For my own part, I protest against such people strongly. They take from the heart its greatest impulses and we cease to live ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... circumstances, does not mean awaiting them with a stoic firmness which proceeds from pride, or hardening one's self against them to the point of repressing all trembling. No! GOD allows us sometimes to anticipate, postpone, or even when possible flee ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... stonemason, journalist, and prime minister, died in April, 1892, a victim to the paralysis which had been steadily creeping for years over his enfeebled frame, and made him a pitiable spectacle as he sat like a Stoic in the front seats of the opposition, unable to speak or even to rise without the helping arm of some attentive friend. On the 30th October, 1893, Sir John Abbott, probably the ablest commercial lawyer in Canada, who had been premier of Canada since ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... sets before us, not the example of a stupid stoic who had by obstinate principles hardened himself against all sense of pain beyond the common measures of humanity, but an example of a man like ourselves, that had a tender sense of the least suffering, and yet ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... into it," he became grave. "Never heard of Mrs. Bob getting up to those tricks," he said, and doubted whether "the missus'ld do after all," until reassured by the Maluka that "she'll be fishing them out with the indifference of a Stoic in a week or two"; and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... must also confound her with virtue. According to you, it is but to diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers aim is accomplished. Nay, more; for, whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure of happiness below (though it be the best road to it), you tell us plainly that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a saint, but bestows the bliss of a god. Before the steps of your idol, the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but 'to know,' ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... THE ALPHABET. It was Athenodo'rus the Stoic who advised Augustus to repeat the alphabet when he felt inclined ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... comprehensiveness, the Stoic ideal is more akin to modern tendencies than that of the soldier-citizen in the city-state. To provide for the excellence of a privileged class at the expense of the rest of the community is becoming to us increasingly impossible in fact and intolerable in idea. But ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the old man, (something like satisfaction darting across his features) "and painful as these feelings are, I would not exchange them for that torpor which the stoic mistakes for philosophy. How many exquisite delights should I have passed by unnoticed, but for these keen sensations, this quick sense of happiness or misery? Then let us, my friend, take the cup of life as it is presented to us, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... door closed softly, Arnold sank with a hopeless gesture into a chair and buried his face in his hands. He was not a stoic, but a man,—a Frenchman, who loved much; but Arnold, half-blinded by his own love, scarcely appreciated the depths of self-forgetfulness to which Ruth would have to succumb in order to accept the guaranty of happiness which he ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... these interesting proceedings were gone through with, the annuities, to which the band were entitled according to their treaty, were presented to them, which they received with outward signs of friendship, though the knowing ones who were on the ground could see, lurking beneath that stoic appearance which a savage usually assumes when facing his white brother, that the red men were not entirely satisfied with past events. However, every means had been employed to pacify the band, who, on first coming into the council, had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... in their labors, looked on expectantly as they reached the deck. On the cook's face was a benevolent and proprietary smile, while Henry concealed his anguish of soul under an appearance of stoic calm. ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... in Topham's frank terms, I knew what to expect. And I found to my amusement he had not overrun the truth. I lost like a stoic, saw nothing, and discovered the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beautiful music or by the sublimity of architecture or by the peacefulness of nature. Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier part of the Republic, that the arts might have the effect of harmonizing as well as of enervating the mind; but in the Tenth Book he regards them through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He asks only 'What good have they done?' and is not satisfied with the reply, that 'They have ...
— The Republic • Plato
... soon saw which way the wind was blowing; and Zinzendorf found, to his great relief, that what had been a painful struggle to him was as easy as changing a dress to Theodora. The young lady gave Count Reuss her heart and hand. The rejected suitor bore the blow like a stoic. He would conquer, he said, such disturbing earthly emotions; why should they be a thicket in the way of his work for Christ? The betrothal was sealed in a religious ceremony. Young Zinzendorf composed a cantata for the occasion {March 9th, 1721.}; the cantata ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... No nation, for example, could have more calmly endured the terrible sufferings of the famine, more especially as the high-strung nerves of the Celt render him physically and mentally the very reverse of a stoic. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... of life, has for me a certain weakness, and even respects me, perhaps, more than others, for he knows that I have never been an informer like Domitius Afer, Tigellinus, and a whole rabble of Ahenobarbus's intimates [Nero's name was originally L. Domitius Ahenobarbus]. Without pretending to be a stoic, I have been offended more than once at acts of Nero, which Seneca and Burrus looked at through their fingers. If it is thy thought that I might do something for thee with Aulus, I am at ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and happy life'; 'virtue and happiness'; so bene honesteque below, 70. — QUI ... PETUNT: these are the [Greek: autarkeis], men sufficient for themselves, 'in se toti teretes atque rotundi'. We have here a reminiscence of the Stoic doctrine about the wise man, whose happiness is quite independent of everything outside himself, and is caused solely by his own virtue. Cicero represents the same Stoic theory in Lael. 7. Cf. Juv. Sat. 10, ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... leaving as little work to the literary executor, except of the purely crematory sort, as did Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, and some others whose names the world will not willingly let die. But this is a stoic's doctrine; the objector may easily retort that if it had been sternly acted on, we should have known very very little about Dr. Johnson, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... stoic, and his manner had extinguished in me every hope, even before he had uttered a word ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... reformers; both, be it said with reverence, were fellow-workers in the cause of humanity, though the Christian could look beyond the proximate aims of morality and prepare men for a final development on which the Stoic could not venture to gaze. Hence there is so much in their principles, so much even in their language, which agrees together, so that the one has been thought, though it must be allowed without adequate reason, to have borrowed directly from the other. [Footnote: ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic[226] open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh,[227] born to shed healing to the nations,[228] that he should be ashamed of our compassion, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his cheerful march through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is a constant source of comfort and inspiration. One feels ashamed of cowardice and petty irritation after witnessing the steady courage of this man. His philosophy of life is totally different from that of Stoicism; for the Stoic says, "Grin and bear it," and usually succeeds in doing neither. Stevenson seems to say, "Laugh and forget it," and he showed ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lucretius, and Epicurean idea of the Divine. Arrival of Stoicism at Rome; Panaetius and the Scipionic circle. Character of Scipio. The religious side of Stoicism; it teaches a new doctrine of the relation of man to God. Stoic idea of God as Reason, and as pervading the universe; adjustment of this to Roman idea of numina. Stoic idea of Man as possessing Reason, and so partaking the Divine nature. Influence of these two ideas on the best type of Roman; ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... not stoic enough to be able to say that the baseness and meanness of things about me gave me no discomfort. In my father's house, I had been used to a little simple luxury, for he liked to be comfortable himself, and could ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... century, that when he saw Desroches sitting alone in the public room, receiving no answers to his questions, never addressed by any of those around him, avoided, coldly eyed, and morally proscribed, Diderot never thought of applying the artificial consolation of the Stoic. He never dreamed of urging that expulsion from the society of friends was not a hardship, a true punishment, and a genuine evil. No one knew better than Diderot that a man should train himself to face the disapprobation of the world with steadfast ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... dazzling, God-crowned summit, the Naza- rene stepped suddenly before the people and their schools of philosophy; Gnostic, Epicurean, and Stoic. He must stem these rising angry elements, and walk serenely over their fretted, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... immediate cause for anguish. Coming to the bank where she had left her cub in the tree, she found the bank caved in and the tree and cub together vanished. Unlike the baby's mother, she could swim; but she knew that she could run faster and farther. In stoic silence, but with a look of piteous anxiety in her eyes, she started on a gallop down the half-drowned shores, clambering the heaps of debris, and swimming the deep, still estuaries where the flood had backed up into the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his name to that which he is known by, and betrothed him to his daughter Faustina. His education was conducted with all care. The ablest teachers were engaged for him, and he was trained in the strict doctrine of the Stoic philosophy, which was his great delight. He was taught to dress plainly and to live simply, to avoid all softness and luxury. His body was trained to hardihood by wrestling, hunting, and outdoor games; and though his constitution was weak, he showed great personal courage to ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... match, Miss Welsh still rebelled, bracing herself with the reflection, "Men and women may be very charming without having any genius;" and to his renewed appeal (1825), "It lies with you whether I shall be a right man or only a hard and bitter Stoic," retorting, "I am not in love with you ... my affections are in a state of perfect tranquillity." But she admitted he was her "only fellowship and support," and confiding at length the truth about Irving, surrendered in the words, "Decide, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... you, without reading Jeremiah twelfth, first to last verse, and me and Amandy will do the same." With which Everett found himself dismissed with a seeming curtness which he could plainly see was an heroic control of emotion in the feeble old stoic who ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... her hands on his shoulders and looked up in his face with eyes few men could resist. They were quite alone in the vast hall—no prying eyes to see that tender caress. Mr. Parmalee was a good deal of a stoic and a little of a cynic; but he was flesh and blood, as even stoics and cynics are, and the man under sixty was not born who could have resisted that dark, bewitching, wheedling, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... is a Stoic—in the sense that we call a statue of Phidias which is modelled after that master's art? Show me a man in this sense modelled after the doctrines that are ever upon his lips. Show me a man that is sick—and happy; an exile—and happy; in evil report—and happy! Show me him, I ask again. So ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... winter months of that second year of teaching Amanda sometimes wondered how she was able to do her work in the schoolroom acceptably. But the strain of being a stoic ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... parting from a circle of most valuable friends, parting too from her own native spot, on being asked if she did not feel deep regret at the thought of leaving those scenes, reply, "What good would it do to cry about it?" The expression might manifest the philosophy of a Stoic, but a Christian philosophy, I am sure it did not. And a more unfeminine spirit than it discovered, I have never known in one of her sex. If it be weak in woman to exhibit great sensibility, it argues no moral strength, to guard against this by affecting to be a stock, or a stone. "The ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... he knew that he was fiercely in love and as foolishly jealous as a moon-calf. Brilliana was as kind to him as ever, but she gave her time to the new man, and Halfman, inwardly bleeding and outwardly the magnificent stoic, left the pair to themselves and absented himself at meal-times on pretext of pressing business with the volunteer troop. But his temper grew as a gale grows and would ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Polly," explained Yancy to Mrs. Cavendish. His voice was far from steady, for Hannibal had been gathered into his arms and had all but wrecked the stoic calm with which the Scratch Hiller was seeking to guard ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Starry World as well as on this Earth—and see if the same conclusions hold good, and if we are therefore justified in loving Nature, or if we should view her with suspicion and distrust, hold ourselves aloof from her, and cultivate a stoic courage in face of a Power whose character ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... a Stoic, chiefly because it developed the great fact that Fanny Hennings wept a whole night and a day after its occurrence, insomuch that her fair face became so swollen as to have lost much of its identity and all its beauty—a fact which filled Queeker with hopes so high that his recovery was greatly ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... word occurred about the business of the day. Once, twice, and thrice I tried to slide the subject in, but was discouraged by the stoic apathy of Rufe, and beaten down before the pouring verbiage of his wife. There is nothing of the Indian brave about me, and I began to grill with impatience. At last, like a highway robber, I cornered Hanson, and bade him stand and deliver his business. Thereupon he gravely rose, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be said that, if a man takes misfortunes quietly, it is because he knows that very many dreadful things may happen in the course of life; and so he looks upon the trouble of the moment as only a very small part of that which might come. This is the Stoic temper—never to be unmindful of the sad fate of humanity—condicionis humanoe oblitus; but always to remember that our existence is full of woe and misery: and that the ills to which we are exposed are innumerable. Wherever he be, a man need only cast a ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... conscience which will render me superior to both. But you forget your promise not to talk in this style, and have deviated far from the character of a friend and brother, with, which you consented to rest satisfied." "Yes; but I find myself unequal to the task. I am not stoic enough tamely to make so great a sacrifice. I must plead for an interest in your favor till you banish me from your presence, and tell me plainly that you hate me." We had by this time reached the gate, and as we dismounted, were unexpectedly accosted by Mr. Selby, who had come, agreeably to promise, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... the productive era of Greek Philosophy had well-nigh passed. Its tendency was less speculative, more ethical and practical than in the earlier time. There were four prominent schools, the New Academy, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean. The supporters of the last-named advocated in Science the doctrine of the atom, in Ethics the pursuit of pleasure, in Religion the complete ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... reticence, the power to keep his own counsel; and did not let the hypocrisy take hold of him, or be other than a hateful compulsory masquerade. At an uncommonly early age, he stands before us accomplished in endurance, for one thing; a very bright young Stoic of his sort; silently prepared for the injustices of men and things. And as for the masquerade, let us hope it was essentially foreign even to the skin of the man! The reader will judge as he goes on. "Je n'ai jamais trompe ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... under the canvas to look for a ship. It was the vigilant Joe Hawkridge who, at length, discovered what was very like a fleck of cloud on the ocean's rim, to the southward. Afraid that his vision tricked him, he displayed no emotion but held himself as steady as any stoic. Jack was wildly excited, blubbering and waving his arms about. His hard-won composure was broken to bits. But even though it were a ship, Joe well knew it might pass afar off and so miss sighting this bit of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... supposed that the young slave showed intelligence, for his master sent or permitted him to attend the lectures of C. Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic philosopher. It may seem strange that such a master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher; but Garnier, the author of a "Memoire sur les Ouvrages d'Epictete," explains this matter very well in ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... a school there is no retiring place for venting your feelings, and he was compelled to smother his tears. He performed his exercise, and repeated his lessons, as if nothing had happened and nothing was about to happen, for Joey was in essence a little stoic. At night he went to his room with the other boys; he could only obtain a small portion of his clothes, these he put up in a handkerchief, went softly downstairs about one o'clock in the morning, put his letter, addressed to McShane, on the hall-table, opened the back door, climbed ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... collection of bears of many species properly installed may be relied upon to reveal many variations of temperament and mentality, from the sanguine and good-natured stoic to the hysterical demon. Captivity brings out many traits of character that in a wild state are either latent ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... reverence that Plato had for Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic, but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground of all the old inquirers ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... importance than the fanatical Jew who was preaching a strange story about what they knew so little of that they took Jesus and Resurrection to be the names of a pair of gods, one male and one female. But in the eyes that see truly—the eyes of God—the relative importance of Apostle and Stoic was otherwise appraised. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... summer Bonaparte is in the saddle; he and his host scour Russian deserts. He has with him Frenchmen and Poles, Italians and children of the Rhine, six hundred thousand strong. He marches on old Moscow. Under old Moscow's walls the rude Cossack waits him. Barbarian stoic! he waits without fear of the boundless ruin rolling on. He puts his trust in a snow-cloud; the wilderness, the wind, and the hail-storm are his refuge; his allies are the elements—air, fire, water. And what are these? Three terrible archangels ever stationed before the throne of Jehovah. They ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... it, that is to yield honor and profit. The first was your choice; let the second be your ambition. Dissipation is incompatible with both; the company, in which you will improve most, will be least expensive to you; and yet I am not such a stoic as to suppose that you will, or to think it right that you should, always be in company with senators and philosophers; but of the juvenile kind let me advise you to be choice. It is easy to make acquaintances, but very difficult to shake them off, however irksome and unprofitable ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... man whom danger could not daunt, Nor sophistry perplex, nor pain subdue; A stoic, reckless of the world's vain taunt, And steeled the path of honor to pursue. So, when by all deserted, still he knew How best to soothe the heart-sick, or confront Sedition; schooled with equal eye to view The frowns of grief and the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... poetic kind; and that the outward circumstances of his life,—his mediocrity of fortune, happy and early marriage, and absence of striking personal charm,—made it easy for him to adhere to a method of life which was, in the truest sense of the term, stoic—stoic alike in its practical abstinences and in its calm and grave ideal. Purely poetic excitement, however, is hard to maintain at a high point; and the description quoted above of the voice which came through the stormy night should be followed by another—by ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... philosopher, fell a martyr in this persecution. He was a native of Neapolis, in Samaria, and was born A. D. 103. Justin was a great lover of truth, and a universal scholar; he investigated the Stoic and Peripatetic philosophy, and attempted the Pythagorean; but the behaviour of one of its professors disgusting him, he applied himself to the Platonic, in which he took great delight. About the year ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... lived, we must perforce consider ourselves rich. After all, possessing honestly all that is necessary for food and clothing, ought we not to be content? Whatever is more than this is only evil, care, superfluity, wanting which we shall have less of an account to render. Happy is poverty, said a stoic, if it is cheerful poverty; and if it is that, it is really not poverty at all, or only poverty of a kind that is far preferable to the riches of the most wealthy, which are amassed with difficulty, preserved with ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... ceased to have a history and began to appropriate the legends of other nations, many such monuments were to be found of events which had become famous in that or other countries. The oldest witness to the story is said to be Crantor, a Stoic philosopher who lived a generation later than Plato, and therefore may have borrowed it from him. The statement is found in Proclus; but we require better assurance than Proclus can give us before we accept this or any ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... be a Stoic! Only—we've never been six thousand miles apart before, and—well, it will seem queer to be left all alone in a country where I simply ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... stodgy, clumsy, sluggish) seek desperately to appropriate, in ferocious lech to be metropolitan, the "spirit of Paris" (American synonyms: silk stockings, "wine," Maxim's, jevousaime, Rat Mort). Announce they also your "mechanical" pleasures, your weighty light-heartedness, your stolid, stoic essay to take unto yourself, still in tigerish itch to be cosmopolitan, the frou-frouishness of the flirting capital over the frontier. Wise old philosophers! Translating you in terms of your palaces of prostitution, your Palais de Danse, your Admirals-Casinos; translating you in terms of your ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... her a more stoic mind, And sunshine struck across the polished floor. She wondered whether this day she should find Gervase a-fishing, and so listen more, Much more again, to all he had to tell. And he was there, but waiting to begin Until she came. They fished ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... the oppressive necessity of the physicists"; and Menander speaks of God, Chance, and Intelligence as undistinguishable. Law unacknowledged goes under the name of Chance: perceived, but not understood, it becomes Necessity. The wisdom of the Stoic was a dogged submission to the arbitrary behests of one; that of the Epicurean an advantage snatched by more or less dexterous management from the equal ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... tenement, Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the Stoic severe." ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... has handled rifle and pick in turn, fighting Arabs or fever as they came, facing an inglorious death in hospital with stoic resignation, and which by its brilliant valour has preserved the most famous traditions of our arms among our ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... rather better than of late. The surges of the sea of troubles rose to overwhelm him; his courage rose to brave them: let them do their worst! he would be a man still! True, his courage had a cry at the heart of it; but there was not a little of the stoic in Richard, and if it was not the stoicism of Epictetus or of Marcus Aurelius, there was yet some timely, transient help in it. He was doing the best he could without God; and sure the Father was pleased to see the effort of his child! To suffer in patience was a step toward himself. No ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... of luster in the black eyes that roved inquiringly from the Englishman's bantering grin to the others in the room. Mukee, the half Cree, was sitting with his elbows on his knees gazing with stoic countenance at this new curiosity who had wandered four hundred miles northward from civilization. Williams, the Hudson's Bay man who claimed to be all white, was staring hard at the red side of the ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... everything looms the man himself—a chronic invalid, who might well have pleaded his weakness and constant pains as an excuse for idleness and railings against fate. Stoic courage in the strong is a virtue, but how much greater the cheerful courage that laughs at sickness and pain! Stevenson writing in a sickbed stories and essays that help one to endure the blows of fate is a spectacle such as this world has few to offer. So the man's life ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... labour and the admiration for their persons. The most eminent of them, however, appear always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much superior to any of the like profession in the present times. The Athenians sent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes the stoic, upon a solemn embassy to Rome; and though their city had then declined from its former grandeur, it was still an independent and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... among the crowd of spectators in the east. He was dressed in an old and woefully ragged suit and wore a high, pointed hat. His face was whitened and he bore a short, crooked, wooden bow and a few crooked, ill made arrows. His mere appearance provoked the "stoic" audience to screams of laughter, and his subsequent "low comedy business," which excelled much that I have seen on the civilized stage, failed not to meet with uproarious demonstrations of approval. Slowly advancing as he enacted ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... the supreme happiness of the one would reduce the other to despair. The first sighs for nothing but repose and liberty; he desires only to live, and to be exempt from labour; nay, the ataraxy of the most confirmed Stoic falls short of his consummate indifference for every other object. On the contrary, the citizen always in motion, is perpetually sweating and toiling, and racking his brains to find out occupations still more laborious: He continues a drudge to his last minute; nay, he courts ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of his own, who "had borne adversity wisely, who had not been broken by fortune, and who, amidst the buffets of fate, had maintained his dignity." There was in Sir Walter, I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian. But Stoic or Christian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable type. Even the last fragments of his imaginative power were all turned to account by that unconquerable will, amidst the discouragement ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... in living according to nature; that reason should be dominant, and tranquillity of spirit be maintained by the complete subjugation of feeling. The emotions are to be kept down by the force of and iron will. This is the Stoic apathy. The world is wisely ordered: whatever is, is right; yet the cause of all things is not personal. Mankind form on great community, "one city." The Epicureans, the second of the prominent sects,—so called from Epicurus, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... call him back. Some stoic quality in her stayed her. It would be useless to call him; it would only tear her own wounds wider open, it would distress him without moving him otherwise. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Aurelius Antoninus, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, was born on April 20, 121 A.D. Having been adopted by Antoninus Pius, whose daughter Faustina he married, he succeeded him as emperor in 161, but freely shared the imperial throne with Lucius ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various |
