Words of the Ancient Wise: June 25

Monday

June 25

BE willing to approve yourself to yourself. Be willing to appear beautiful in the sight of God: be desirous to converse in purity with your own pure mind, and with God; and then, if any such appearance strikes you, Plato directs you: "Have recourse to expiations: go a suppliant to the temples of the averting deities." It is sufficient, however, if you propose to yourself the example of wise and good men, whether alive or dead; and compare your conduct with theirs.

EPICTETUS. DISCOURSES. Book ii. §18. ¶4

Using this Blog

For this year, we are continuing our move to a new set of quotes, drawn from Frederic Holland's 1879 "The Reign of the Stoics." Unlike the previous volume which drew only on Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, 'Reign' includes quotes from very nearly every source of Stoic wisdom, arranged topically. The only significant gap is quotes from the works of Musonius Rufus, which I will be adding under the correct topics.

The passages from Words of the Ancient Wise will remain on the blog under the year 2011. I found Words of the Ancient Wise in late 2008, and my wife and I had been reading the passages fairly consistently since. 2011 was the third year of our run through this text. Re-reading the old comment reveals some interesting truths about our lives.

Cheers and Good Reading