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These are the Stoic lines in this library, and only those. The four people are Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and Zeno of Citium. Later admirers are not silently added. Each card is a paraphrase or a translation unless its badge says otherwise. None of these four is filed here with a Misattributed line. That is a fact about this library, not about every mug on sale.
The groups follow the words on the cards. Time is Seneca on wasting life, postponing, and living as long as one ought, plus Epictetus on giving a thing back rather than losing it. Death overlaps that group where the card is about a last act or ten thousand years. Discipline is practice: be one, the obstacle as the way, the headland, being thought foolish, refusing the name of philosopher, keeping on learning, living in agreement with nature, and the two ears. Anger is delay, not becoming like the person who injured you, and the judgement that a blow is an insult. Anxiety is imagination, judgements, wishing events to be as they are, the inner retreat, and the morning preparation.
Zeno’s cards are reports, and Diogenes Laertius and Stobaeus are named on them. Marcus’s cards are all from Meditations, and they have their own hub. Seneca on time has another. Epictetus’s short cards are from the Enchiridion, which the citations already say. A sentence can sit in two groups when the card really is about both. Nothing below is a statistic, and nothing is a claim that this is the whole school.
Only the cards that are about time being spent, postponed, or given back.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”
Seneca · On the Shortness of Life 1.3
Opening argument of De Brevitate Vitae, close translation. The essay then catalogues the ways busy people give their years away.
Open the card“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
Seneca · Moral Letters to Lucilius 1.1
Richard M. Gummere's Loeb translation of the opening of Letter 1. The Latin is secure, and this English is Gummere's.
Open the card“The wise person will live as long as they ought, not as long as they can.”
Seneca · Moral Letters 70.4
A close modernisation of Richard M. Gummere's Loeb translation of Letter 70.4, which has 'wise man' and 'he'. The letter discusses when a Stoic may end their life.
Open the card“Never say of anything, 'I have lost it,' but, 'I have given it back.'”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 11
Close to W. A. Oldfather's Loeb translation of Enchiridion 11. Elizabeth Carter has 'restored' rather than 'given back'. Arrian recorded the Handbook from Epictetus's teaching.
Open the cardCards whose text or theme is death, last acts, or the length of a life.
“Do every act of your life as though it were your last.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 2.5
The closing clause of Meditations 2.5. Gregory Hays (2002) has 'do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life', after a longer instruction about seriousness, justice, and freedom from show. George Long is the older English.
Open the card“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 4.17
Very close to Gregory Hays, Meditations (2002), who writes 'Don't act as if you were going to live ten thousand years.' George Long and A. S. L. Farquharson are the older, stiffer English of the same note.
Open the card“The wise person will live as long as they ought, not as long as they can.”
Seneca · Moral Letters 70.4
A close modernisation of Richard M. Gummere's Loeb translation of Letter 70.4, which has 'wise man' and 'he'. The letter discusses when a Stoic may end their life.
Open the card“Never say of anything, 'I have lost it,' but, 'I have given it back.'”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 11
Close to W. A. Oldfather's Loeb translation of Enchiridion 11. Elizabeth Carter has 'restored' rather than 'given back'. Arrian recorded the Handbook from Epictetus's teaching.
Open the card“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”
Seneca · On the Shortness of Life 1.3
Opening argument of De Brevitate Vitae, close translation. The essay then catalogues the ways busy people give their years away.
Open the cardCards about practice, the next action, and not performing the name of philosopher.
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good person should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 10.16
Fair modern compression of a short Greek rebuke to himself. Long's older English is stiffer: 'No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.'
Open the card“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 5.20, in Gregory Hays's translation (2002)
The Greek passage is secure. Hays's English is a forceful modern rendering, not a word-for-word crib. George Long (1862) is closer to: the mind converts a hindrance into an aid, and an obstacle on the road helps us on the road.
Open the card“Be like the headland against which the waves continually break.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 4.49
Meditations 4.49. George Long has a promontory against which the waves continually break. Gregory Hays (2002) has a rocky headland and waves that constantly break. This English sits between them. The Greek goes on: the headland stands until, around it, the sea falls quiet.
Open the card“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to externals.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 13
Close translation. 'Externals' is a technical Stoic word: body, property, reputation, things not fully up to us.
Open the card“Never call yourself a philosopher, and do not talk at length among non-philosophers about your principles.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 46
Close to W. A. Oldfather's Loeb translation of Enchiridion 46. Arrian condensed Epictetus's teaching into the Handbook; this chapter warns the student against the costume of philosophy.
Open the card“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
Seneca · Moral Letters 76.3
Translation of tamdiu discendum est, quemadmodum vivas, quamdiu vivas. Secure in the letter.
Open the card“The end is to live in agreement with nature.”
Zeno of Citium · Diogenes Laertius 7.87, reporting Zeno
Zeno's books are lost. This is the standard doxographical formula for his ethics. Later Stoics repeat and refine it. The exact words are not from an extant work of his.
Open the card“He used to say that we have two ears and one mouth, so that we might hear more and talk less.”
Zeno of Citium · Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.23, reporting Zeno of Citium
Diogenes Laertius 7.23, in the life of Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoa. His books are lost. This is a reported saying, not a sentence from the Republic, the book of his that does not survive.
Open the cardThe cards that name anger, revenge, or the judgement that you have been insulted.
“The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
Seneca · On Anger II.29.1
A standard English of On Anger II.29. John W. Basore translated De Ira for the Loeb Classical Library; Richard M. Gummere's Loeb is the Moral Letters, not this essay.
Open the card“The best revenge is not to become like the person who injured you.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 6.6
A modern English of Meditations 6.6, nearer George Long's 'not to become like the wrong-doer' than Gregory Hays's shorter 2002 cadence. The Greek note is his; the word 'revenge' is the translators' sharpening.
Open the card“It is not the person who abuses or strikes you who insults you, but your judgement that these things are insulting.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 20
Close to W. A. Oldfather's Loeb translation of Enchiridion 20. Arrian recorded the Handbook; Epictetus taught it.
Open the cardFear, imagination, and the judgement added to events. A separate hub collects these.
“There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca · Moral Letters to Lucilius 13.4
Close translation of a sentence in Letter 13. Seneca's Latin is secure. The English 'suffer more in imagination than in reality' is the usual, fair compression of the second clause.
Open the card“It is not things that disturb people, but their judgements about things.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 5
Close translation of a core Epictetan sentence, via Arrian. Modern therapies that sound like this are often, knowingly or not, in this line.
Open the card“Do not seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 8
Standard translation of Handbook 8. It is easy to over-read as passivity. In context it is about desire, not about refusing to act.
Open the card“People seek retreats for themselves, in the country, by the sea, in the hills. But this is altogether unphilosophical, when you can at any moment retreat into yourself.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 4.3
Close to the sense of 4.3 in standard translations. He goes on to say the retreat must be to a soul that is ordered; otherwise the inner room is just as noisy.
Open the card“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 2.1
The Greek is secure private writing. This English follows Hays closely and is a little freer than Long. The next sentences say he still has to work with them, because they share in reason.
Open the cardMarcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and Zeno of Citium. Only lines already filed under those four names are included.
They are marked Paraphrase or translation unless a card says otherwise. Marcus wrote Meditations in Greek. Seneca and the reports of Zeno are Latin or later reports. Epictetus’s Enchiridion is Arrian’s notes.
On the hub Stoic quotes for anxiety, which keeps the fear and judgement cards and leaves the rest here.