All quotations in this program are drawn from public-domain English translations of the primary Stoic texts, verified against the following editions. Citations use the traditional book-and-section numbering; where a paraphrase or non-Latin original numbering is used, this is noted in the day’s text.

Primary Texts Cited#

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, “Things to Himself”)#

• Translation: George Long (1862), available via Wikisource and Standard Ebooks.
• Passages cited: 2.1, 2.5, 2.14, 4.3, 4.7, 5.16, 6.6, 7.28, 8.47, 8.48, 8.49, 9.32, 10.8, 11.1, 11.8.
• Note on 4.7: The popular rendering “Choose not to be harmed — and you will not feel harmed” is a paraphrase found in modern translations (e.g., Gregory Hays, 2002) of the same passage Long renders as “Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed.’”
• Note on 8.49: The passage is paraphrased in this program for clarity; the original Long wording is preserved in spirit.

Epictetus, Enchiridion (The Handbook)#

• Translation: Elizabeth Carter (1758), available via the Internet Classics Archive at MIT (classics.mit.edu).
• Passages cited: 1, 5, 8, 21.

Epictetus, Discourses (Διατριβαί)#

• Translation: George Long (1877), available via Wikisource.
• Passages cited: 1.1, 3.24.
• Note on Discourses 3.24: Titled in Long’s edition “That we ought not to be moved by a desire of those things which are not in our power.”

Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Letters to Lucilius)#

• Translation: Richard Mott Gummere (Loeb Classical Library, 1917–1925), available via Wikisource.
• Passages cited: 1, 13, 18, 49, 63, 71, 101, 104, 107.
• Note on Letter 107: Includes Seneca’s quotation of Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus (107.11), which is paraphrased in this program.

Seneca, De Ira (On Anger)#

• Translation: Aubrey Stewart (1900), available via Wikisource.
• Passage cited: III.12 — “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
• (Note: This passage is widely cited in the tradition; readers are encouraged to confirm against the Wikisource edition of De Ira Book III.)

Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life)#

• Translation: John W. Basore (Loeb Classical Library, 1932), available via Wikisource.
• Passage cited: I.1 — “It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.”

Musonius Rufus#

• Referenced conceptually (Phase III voluntary discomfort) but not directly quoted. The standard English edition is Cora E. Lutz, Musonius Rufus: The Roman Socrates (Yale University Press, 1947). His Lecture 6 (“On Practice”) is the classical source for the Stoic doctrine that the man who would be good must not only learn the principles but practice them.

Secondary and Background Sources#

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — entries on Epictetus, Stoicism, and Marcus Aurelius (plato.stanford.edu).
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — entry on Marcus Aurelius (iep.utm.edu).
• Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Harvard University Press, 1998) — for the concept of the “Inner Citadel” and Stoic spiritual exercises.
• A. S. L. Farquharson, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus (Oxford, 1944) — for the structure and themes of the Meditations.
• Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman, The Daily Stoic (Portfolio/Penguin, 2016) — for several of the modern phrasings of ancient passages used in this program.

Concepts and Their Original Sources#