这本书的后半部分是55项真正把斯多葛付诸运用的建议。全部摘录在这里。是为一个实践的指南。
Practice 1
The Stoic Art of Acquiescence: Accept and Love Whatever Happens
“O world, I am in tune with every note of thy great harmony. For me nothing is early, nothing late, if it be timely for thee. O Nature, all that thy seasons yield is fruit for me.”
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 2
Undertake Actions with a Reserve Clause
"I will sail across the ocean, if nothing Prevents me.”
- SENECA
Practice 3
What Stands in the Way, Becomes the Way
"The impediment to action advances actions. What stands in the way becomes the way."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 4
Remind Yourself of the Impermanence ofThings
"When giving your child or wife a kiss, repeat to yourself, 'I am kissing a mortal"'
- EPICTETUS
Practice 5
Contemplate Your Own Death
"I am not eternal, but a human being, a part of the whole, as an hour is of the day. Like an hour I must come and, like an hour, passaway."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 6
Consider Everything as Borrowed fromNature
"We have no grounds for self-admiration, as though we were surrounded by our own possessions, they have been loaned to us. We may use and enjoy them, but the one who allotted his gift decides how long we are to be tenants, our duty is to keep ready the gifts we have been given for an indefinite time and to return them when called upon, making no complaint: it is a sorry debtor who abuses his creditor."
- SENECA
Practice 7
Negative Visualization: Foreseeing Bad
Stuff
"It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs maneuvers, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by unnecessary in order that he may be equal when it is necessary. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes."
- SENECA
Practice 8
Voluntary Discomfort
"But neither a bull nor a noble-spirited man comes to be what he is all at once, he must undertake hard winter training, and prepare himself and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate to him."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 9
Prepare Yourself for the Day: The StoicMorning Routine
"When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don't know the difference between good and evil."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 10
Review Your Day: The Stoic Evening Routine
"I make use of this opportunity, daily pleading my case at my own court. When the light has been taken away and my wife has fallen silent, aware as she is of my habit, I examine my entire day, going through what I have done and said. I conceal nothing from myself; I pass nothing by. have nothing to fear from my errors when I can say: 'See that you do not do this anymore. For the moment, I excuse you."'
- SENECA
Practice 11
Keep a Role Model in Mind: Contemplate theStoic Sage
"'We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live IS if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what were doing.' This is Epicurus' advice, and in giving it he has given us a guardian and a moral tutor---and not without reason, either: misdeeds are greatly diminished if a witness is always standing near intending doers."
- SENECA
Practice 12
Stoic Aphorisms: Keep Your "Weapons"Ready at Hand
“Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 13
Play Your Given Roles Well
"Remember that you are an actor in a play determined by the
author: if short, then short, if long, then long. If he wants you to act as a beggar, then act even that with excellence, just asa
cripple, a ruler or a citizen. Because that is your objective:to act the role that is given to you well. To select the role is up to someone else."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 14
Eliminate the Nonessential
"Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, 'Is this necessary?' But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 15
Forget Fame
"People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 16
Like a Minimalist: Live Simple
"Is it not madness and the wildest to desire so much when you can hold so little?"
- Seneca
Practice 17
Take Back Your Time: Cut Out News and Other Timewasters
“It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth, for then you won't tire and give if you aren't busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 18
Win at What Matters
"You are winning affection in a job in which it is hard to avoid ill-will; but believe me it is better to understand the balance-sheet of one's own life than of the com trade."
- SENECA
Practice 19
Become an Eternal Student
"Leisure without study is death- a tomb for the living person."
- SENECA
Practice 20
What Do You Have to Show for Your Years?
"Nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive. We have to be more careful in preserving what will cease at an unknown point."
- SENECA
Practice 21
Do What Needs to Get Done
"On those mornings you struggle with getting keep this thought in mind- I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I'm made for, the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It's so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself`?"
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 22
Your Judgment Harms You
"If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 23
How to Deal With Grief
"It's better to conquer grief than to deceive it"
- SENECA
Practice 24
Choose Courage and Calm over Anger
"Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on-it isn't manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn't give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance- unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 25
Beat Fear with Preparation and Reason
"We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality."
- SENECA
Practice 26
Blame Your Expectations
"The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That's all you need to know. Nothing more. Don't demand to know 'why such things exist.' Anyone who understands the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from work."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 27
Pain and Provocation: Great Opportunities for Virtue
"For every challenge, remember the resources you have within you to cope with it. Provoked by the sight of a handsome man or a beautiful woman, you will discover within you the contrary power of self-restraint. Faced with you will discover the power of endurance. If you are insulted, you will discover patience. In time, you will grow to be confident that there is not a single impression that you will not have the moral means to tolerate."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 28
The Equanimity Game
"When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 29
The Anti-Puppet Mindset
"If a person gave away your body to some passersby, you'd be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled-have you no shame in that?"
- EPICTETUS
Practice 30
Life Is Supposed to Be Challenging
"Difficulties show a person's character. So when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer. Why? Becoming an Olympian takes sweat! I think no one has a better challenge than yours, if only you would use it like an athlete would that younger sparring partner."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 31
What's so Troublesome
Here and Now?
"Do not let the panorama of your life oppress you, do not dwell on all the various troubles which may have occurred in the past or may occur M the future. Just ask yourself in each instance of the present: 'What is there in this work which I cannot endure or support?"'
-MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 32
Count Your Blessings
"Don't set your mind on things you don't possess as they were yours, but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them if they weren't already yours. But watch yourself; that you don't value these things to the point of being troubled if you should lose them,"
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 33
Other-ize
"We can familiarize ourselves with the will of nature by calling to mind our common experiences. When a friend breaks a glass, we are quick to say, 'Oh, bad luck.' It's only reasonable, then, that when a glass of your own breaks, you accept it in the same patient spirit We would do better to remember how we react when a similar loss afflicts others."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 34
Take the Bird's-Eye View
"How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to about people, it's best to take a bird's-eye view and see everything all at once-of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent places, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets- all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 35
It's the Same Old Things
"Everything that happens is as simple and familiar as the rose in spring, the fruit in summer: disease, death, blasphemy, conspiracy ….. everything that makes stupid people happy or angry."
-MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 36
Meat Is Dead Animal: Observe Objectively
"When we have meat before us and such eatables, we receive the impression that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a bird or of a and again, that this Falernian [wine] is only a little grape juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish, in the matter of sexual intercourse, that it is merely an internal attrition and the spasmodic expulsion of semen: such then are these impressions, and they reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see the things as they truly are."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 37
Avoid Rashness : Test Your Impressions(!)
"So make a practice at once of saying to every strong impression: 'An impression is all you are, not the source of the impression.' Then test and assess it with your criteria, but one primarily: ask, 'Is this something that is, or is not, in my control'?' And if it's not one of the things that you control, be ready with the reaction, 'Then it's none of my concern."'
- EPICTETUS
Practice 38
Do good, Be good
"Don't behave as if you are destined to live forever.What's fated hangs over you. As long as you live and while you can, become good now."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 39
We Are All Limbs of the Same Body
“I ,then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature, and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 40
Nobody Errs on Purpose
"When a man assents, then, to what is false, know that he had no wish to assent to the false: 'for no soul is robbed of the truth with its own consent,' as Plato says, but the false seemed to him true."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 41
Find Your Own Faults
"Whenever you take offense at someone's wrongdoing, immediately turn to your own similar failings, such as seeing money as good, or pleasure, or a little fame-whatever form it takes. By thinking on this, you'll quickly forget your anger, considering also what compels them- for what else could they if you are able, remove their compulsion."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 42
Forgive and Love Those Who Stumble
"Whenever you meet someone, say to yourself from the outset, 'What are his assumptions concerning what is fundamentally good and bad in life?' When someone acts like your enemy, insults or opposes you, remember that he was only doing what seemed to him the right thing, he didn't know any better, and tell yourself: 'It seemed so to him."'
- EPICTETUS
Practice 43
Pity Rather than Blame the Wrongdoer
“As we pity the blind and the lame, so should we pity those who are blinded and lamed in their most sovereign faculties. The man who remembers this, I say, will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile none, blame none, hate none, offend none."
-EPICTETUS
Practice 44
Kindness Is Strength
"Whenever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness"
- SENECA
Practice 45
How to Deal with Insults
"How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?"
- SENECA
Practice 46
Scratches Happen In Training
“When your sparring partner scratches or head-butts you, you don't then make a show of it, or protest, or view him with suspicion or as plotting against you. And yet you keep an eye on him, not as an enemy or with suspicion, but with a healthy avoidance. You should act this way with all things in life. We should give a pass to many things with our fellow trainees. For, as I've said, it's possible to avoid without suspicion or hate."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 47
Don't Abandon Others nor Yourself
“As you move forward along the path of reason, people will stand in your way. They will never be able to keep you from doing what's sound, so don't let them knock out your goodwill for them. Keep a steady watch on both fronts, not only for well-based judgments and actions, but also for gentleness with those who would obstruct our path or create other difficulties. For getting angry is also a weakness, justas much as abandoning the task or surrendering under panic. For doing either is an equal desertion- the one by shrinking back and the other by estrangement from family and friend."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 48
For Such a Small Price, Buy Tranquillity
“Starting with things of little value-a bit of spilled oil, a little stolen wine-repeat to yourself:” For such a small price I buy tranquillity and peace of mind.”’
-EPICTETUS
Practice 49
Put Yourself in Other People's Shoes
"When you face someone's insults, hatred, whatever look at his soul. Get inside him. Look at what sort of person he is. You'll find you don't need to strain to impress him."
-MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 50
Choose Your Company Well
"Avoid fraternizing with non-philosophers. If you must, though, be careful not to sink to their level, because, you know, if a companion is dirty, his friends cannot help but get a little dirty too, no matter how clean they started out."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 51
Don't Judge But Yourself
"Someone bathes in haste, don't say he bathes badly, but in haste. Someone drinks a lot of wine, don't say he drinks badly, but Until you know their reasons, how do you know that their actions are vicious? This will save you from perceiving one thing clearly, but then assenting to something different."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 52
Do Good, Not Only No Evil
"Often injustice lies in what you aren't doing, not only in what you are doing."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 53
Say Only What's Not Better Left Unsaid
"Let silence be your goal for the most part, say only what is necessary, and be brief about it. On the rare occasions when you're called upon to speak, then speak, but never about banalities like gladiators, horses, sports, food and drink common-place stuff. Above all don't gossip about people, praising, blaming or comparing them."
- EPICTETUS
Practice 54
Listen with the Intent to Understand
"Acquire the habit of attending carefully to what is being said by another, and of entering, so far as possible, into the mind of the speaker."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
Practice 55
Lead by Example
"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
- MARCUS AURELIUS
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