80 Top Quotes From A Guide to The Good Life
"A Guide to the Good Life" introduces readers to the timeless wisdom of Stoicism and its practical application to finding tranquility and meaning in today's chaotic world. William B. Irvine delves into the ancient philosophy, offering a contemporary interpretation that resonates with modern-day challenges. By advocating for the practice of Stoic principles like negative visualization, practicing voluntary discomfort, and focusing on what lies within our control, Irvine shows readers how to attain genuine happiness and inner peace.
This guide serves as a powerful tool for achieving emotional resilience and mental clarity, as well as cultivating gratitude for the present moment. By integrating Stoic practices into daily life, individuals can navigate adversity, confront desires, and embrace a life of purpose and virtue. "A Guide to the Good Life" is a compelling and accessible invitation to reconsider one's approach to happiness and embrace the enduring wisdom of the Stoics. (A Guide to The Good Life Summary).
A Guide to The Good Life Quotes
"Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won’t be able to fulfill.”
"The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.”
"Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.” (Meaning)
"If we seek social status, we give other people power over us: We have to do things calculated to make them admire us, and we have to refrain from doing things that will trigger their disfavor.”
"By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent.”
"One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted.”
"If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life; if, however, you refuse to think of yourself as a victim—if you refuse to let your inner self be conquered by your external circumstances—you are likely to have a good life, no matter what turn your external circumstances take."
"We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.”
"Throughout the millennia and across cultures, those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquility.”
"It is, after all, hard to know what to choose when you aren’t really sure what you want.”
"Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence.”
"We need, in other words, to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.”
"If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. More generally, says Seneca, if we coddle ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by pleasure, nothing will seem bearable to us, and the reason things will seem unbearable is not because they are hard but because we are soft.”
"We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours.”
"We can do some historical research to see how our ancestors lived. We will quickly discover that we are living in what to them would have been a dream world that we tend to take for granted things that our ancestors had to live without...”
"We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment.”
"To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.18 The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life.”
"For the Stoics, however, the near impossibility of becoming a sage is not a problem. They talk about sages primarily so they will have a model to guide them in their practice of Stoicism. The sage is a target for them to aim at, even though they will probably fail to hit it."
"On reading these and the other irritants Seneca lists, one is struck by how little human nature has changed in the past two millennia.”
"The problem is that “bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters,” and because they cannot control their desires, they can never find contentment.”
"Negative visualization, in other words, teaches us to embrace whatever life we happen to be living and to extract every bit of delight we can from it. But it simultaneously teaches us to prepare ourselves for changes that will deprive us of the things that delight us. It teaches us, in other words, to enjoy what we have without clinging to it.”
"Rather, Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.”
"Indeed, anger can be thought of as anti-joy.”
"One wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.”
"After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen.”
"More generally, when we find ourselves irritated by someone’s shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings.”
"Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, “who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.”
"It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.”
"People are unhappy, the Stoics argue, in large part because they are confused about what is valuable. Because of their confusion, they spend their days pursuing things that, rather than making them happy, make them anxious and miserable. One”
"Most of us are “living the dream” living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves.”
"We should use our reasoning ability to overcome negative emotions. We should also use our reasoning ability to master our desires, to the extent that it is possible to do so. In particular, we should use reason to convince ourselves that things such as fame and fortune aren’t worth having—not, at any rate, if what we seek is tranquility—and therefore aren’t worth pursuing. Likewise, we should use our reasoning ability to convince ourselves that even though certain activities are pleasurable, engaging in those activities will disrupt our tranquility, and the tranquility lost will outweigh the pleasure gained."
"One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get.”
"Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science. Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he abandoned it to focus his attention on the human condition.”
"A much better, albeit less obvious way to gain satisfaction is not by working to satisfy our desires but by working to master them. In particular, we need to take steps to slow down the desire-formation process within us. Rather than working to fulfill whatever desires we find in our head, we need to work at preventing certain desires from forming and eliminating many of the desires that have formed. And rather than wanting new things, we need to work at wanting the things we already have. This”
"It will help us to overcome our anger, says Seneca, if we remind ourselves that our behavior also angers other people: “We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.”
"Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. By practicing Stoic techniques, we can cure the disease and thereby gain tranquility.”
"BEGIN EACH DAY by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”
"He who studies with a philosopher should take away with him some one good thing every day: he should daily return home a sounder man, or on the way to become sounder.”
"We should love all of our dear ones …, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.”
"He adds that the worse a man is, the less likely he is to accept constructive criticism.”
"Around the world and throughout the millennia, those who have thought carefully about the workings of desire have recognized this—that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.”
"In the Meditations, he offers advice on what to do at such junctures: Continue to practice Stoicism, “even when success looks hopeless.”
"There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.”
"Seneca reminds us how small our bodies are and poses this question: “Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?”
"People who achieve luxurious lifestyles are rarely satisfied: Experiencing luxury only whets their appetite for even more luxury.”
"Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, “the more masters will he have to serve.”
"This is because the desire for luxuries is not a natural desire. Natural desires, such as a desire for water when we are thirsty, can be satisfied; unnatural desires cannot.12 Therefore, when we find ourselves wanting something, we should pause to ask whether the desire is natural or unnatural, and if it is unnatural, we should think twice about trying to satisfy it.”
"Stoic philosophy is like a fertile field, with “Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil.”
"Realize that such comments are to be expected from academics. We are a pathetically contentious lot. We want others not only to be aware of our work but to admire it and, better still, to defer to the conclusions we have drawn. The problem is that our colleagues seek the same admiration and deference from us. Something has to give, and as a result, on campuses everywhere, academics routinely engage in verbal fisticuffs. Put-downs are commonplace, and insults fly.”
"All we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus,”
"Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”
"By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life.”
"We must take care to be “the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.”
"Epictetus: “Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.”
"A grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life.”
"And although wealth can procure for us physical luxuries and various pleasures of the senses, it can never bring us contentment or banish our grief.”
"We must take care to be “the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.”
"Modern individuals rarely see the need to adopt a philosophy of life. They instead tend to spend their days working hard to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, in the resolute belief that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling.”
"When someone says he wants to be perfectly straightforward with us, we should be on the lookout for a concealed dagger.”
"Indeed, when we awaken in the morning, rather than lazily lying in bed, we should tell ourselves that we must get up to do the proper work of man, the work we were created to perform.”
"Elsewhere, Marcus suggests that when we know our death is at hand, we can ease our anguish on leaving this world by taking a moment to reflect on all the annoying people we will no longer have to deal with when we are gone.”
"For each desire we fulfill in accordance with this strategy, a new desire will pop into our head to take its place. This means that no matter how hard we work to satisfy our desires, we will be no closer to satisfaction than if we had fulfilled none of them. We will, in other words, remain dissatisfied.”
"Humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.”
"When, as the result of being exposed to luxurious living, people become hard to please, a curious thing happens. Rather than mourning the loss of their ability to enjoy simple things, they take pride in their newly gained inability to enjoy anything but “the best.”
"There is nothing important, nothing serious, nor wretched either, in the whole outfit of life.”
"According to Epictetus, the primary concern of philosophy should be the art of living: Just as wood is the medium of the carpenter and bronze is the medium of the sculptor, your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living.”
"We are very much responsible for our happiness as well as our unhappiness.”
"We should become self-aware: We should observe ourselves as we go about our daily business, and we should periodically reflect on how we responded to the day’s events. How did we respond to an insult? To the loss of a possession? To a stressful situation? Did we, in our responses, put Stoic psychological strategies to work? •”
"Only when we assume responsibility for our happiness that we will have a reasonable chance of gaining it.”
"Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that “all things everywhere are perishable.”
"If, despite not having pursued wealth, we find ourselves wealthy, we should enjoy our affluence; it was the Cynics, not the Stoics, who advocated asceticism. But although we should enjoy wealth, we should not cling to it; indeed, even as we enjoy it, we should contemplate its loss. •”
"The pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue.”
"Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.”
"Someone who practices Stoic principles “must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” Furthermore, compared to these joys, pleasures of the flesh are “paltry and trivial and fleeting.”6”
"The Stoics fell somewhere between the Cyrenaics and the Cynics: They thought people should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friendship and wealth, but only if they did not cling to these good things. Indeed, they thought we should periodically interrupt our enjoyment of what life has to offer to spend time contemplating the loss of whatever it is we are enjoying.”
"The Stoics pointed to two principal sources of human unhappiness—our insatiability and our tendency to worry about things beyond our control—and they developed techniques for removing these sources of unhappiness from our life. •”
"Seneca writes, “Nature requires from us some sorrow, while more than this is the result of vanity. But never will I demand of you that you should not grieve at all.”
"Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.”
"Although it might not be possible to eliminate grief from our life, it is possible, Seneca thinks, to take steps to minimize the amount of grief we experience over the course of a lifetime”
"Epictetus would reject this manner of dealing with insults as being woefully counterproductive. He would point out, to begin with, that the political correctness movement has some untoward side effects. One is that the process of protecting disadvantaged individuals from insults will tend to make them hypersensitive to insults: They will, as a result, feel the sting not only of direct insults but of implied insults as well.”
"Our goal should therefore be to become indifferent to other people’s opinions of us. He adds that if we can succeed in doing this, we will improve the quality of our life.”
"It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.”
"The profound realization, thanks to the practice of Stoicism, that acquiring the things that those in my social circle typically crave and work hard to afford will, in the long run, make zero difference in how happy I am and will in no way contribute to my having a good life.”
"Use our reasoning ability to drive away “all that excites or affrights us.”
"The Stoics, as we have seen, thought tranquility was worth pursuing, and the tranquility they sought, it will be remembered, is a psychological state in which we experience few negative emotions, such as anxiety, grief, and fear, but an abundance of positive emotions, especially joy.”
"This in turn suggests the possibility of restating Epictetus’s dichotomy of control as a trichotomy: There are things over which we have complete control, things over which we have no control at all, and things over which we have some but not complete control.”
"Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.”
― Quotes from the book A Guide to The Good Life by William B. Irvine
A Guide to The Good Life Author
A prominent philosopher and writer, William B. Irvine is celebrated for his insightful exploration of ancient Stoic philosophy and its practical application in modern life. In works like "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy," Irvine skillfully introduces readers to Stoicism's core principles, advocating for the pursuit of inner tranquility and a life of virtue. Through his lucid and accessible writing style, he demystifies complex philosophical concepts, offering practical exercises and techniques to cultivate resilience and emotional well-being. Irvine's approach to Stoicism goes beyond theoretical musings, as he encourages readers to embrace challenges, manage desires, and navigate life's uncertainties with a calm and balanced outlook. His contributions have made Stoic philosophy accessible to contemporary audiences, empowering them to lead more purposeful and fulfilling lives amidst the complexities of the modern world.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
