Personal well-being and stoics

About Socrates, stoicism and our everyday lives: "He argued, paradoxically, that 'it is self-discipline, above all things, that causes pleasure.' Self-control is healthier and actually leads to more enjoyment than self-indulgence, particularly with regard to the most common sources of pleasure in daily life."


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'Virtues follow each other, and those who have one, have all'

Daily practice and decision guides or good weights on decisions. Sometimes, help simply answer 'how to be':

Traditional cardinal virtues:

• Wisdom (sophia) or prudence (phronesis), which opposes the vice or folly or thoughtlessness (aphrosune)
• Includes excellent deliberation, good calculation, quick-witedness, good sense, a healthy sense of purpose and resourcefulness.
• Justice, lawfulness, or integrity (dikaiosune, sometimes 'righteousness'), which opposes wrongdoing or injustice (adikia)
• Includes piety to the gods, good-heartedness or benevolence, public service and fair dealing.
• Courage or fortitude (andreia, literarlly 'manliness'), which opposes cowardice (deilia)
• Includes endurance, confidence, great-heartedness, brave-heartedness, and love of work
• Moderation or temperance (sophrosune, sometimes 'discretion'), which opposes intemperance or excess (akolasia)
• Includes organization, ordeliness, modesty, and self-control.

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The above from Donald Robertson's book.

A few of the books he refers to:

• Seneca, Dialogues and Essays. Selected Letters
• Cicero, On the Good Life, On Moral Ends
• Musonius Rufus, Lectures and Sayings
• Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
• Epictetus, The Discourse & Handbook
• Lucan, The Civil War
• Diogenes the Cynic, Sayings and Anecdotes
• Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers.
• The Way of Hermes
• The Pythagorean Sourcebook
• Plato: Complete Works
• Generally, books by the Loeb Classical Library

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'Never cease to think of the cosmos as one animal, possessed of a single substance and a single mind.'