Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

solitary man; he was, like so many of us in the modern world, an island. He might have been famous, but he was a stranger to him ...

that they can find serenity, so that they can preserve and protect their accomplishments. What good is it to be rational at work ...

M CHOOSE VIRTUE The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON arcus Aurelius famously d ...

English but is roughly understood as a person who emanates integrity, honor, and self-control. If the concept of “virtue” seems ...

ourselves to and what we will regard as important, honorable, and admirable. The choices we make in that regard determine whethe ...

At the height of his career, he could be found working as a fixer for the emperor, Nero. Nero, although he had begun as a promis ...

goals by the weather just as easily as you can by a dictator. But virtue? No one can stop you from knowing what’s right. Nothing ...

T HEAL THE INNER CHILD The child is in me still... and sometimes not so still. —FRED ROGERS here was always something childlike ...

his son was to give him an insatiable drive for an unconditional patron.” Indeed, all of Leonardo’s artistic life exhibits an al ...

eventually becoming the minor leagues’ top pitching prospect. Then suddenly, just as his career was starting to go well, in the ...

obnoxious meddling of his parents. Instinctively, emotionally, he had fought and resisted each intervention. Who are these idiot ...

have when you are hurt or betrayed or unexpectedly challenged in some way. That’s your inner child. They need a hug from you. Th ...

J BEWARE DESIRE Every man has a passion gnawing away at the bottom of his heart, just as every fruit has its worm. —ALEXANDRE DU ...

Kennedy was no romantic. Girlfriends would describe his insatiable but joyless sex drive. According to one conquest, sex was “ju ...

indulge their endless appetites, whatever they happened to be? And at least power and sex and attention are pleasurable. The mos ...

To the Epicureans real pleasure was about freedom from pain and agitation. If wanting something makes you miserable while you do ...

Let us each note and write down our actions and impulses of the soul... as though we were to report them to each other; and you ...

T ENOUGH History relates no instance in which a conqueror has been surfeited with conquests. —STEFAN ZWEIG he writers Kurt Vonne ...

John Stuart Mill, the philosopher and boy genius who before he hit puberty read and mastered nearly every major classical text i ...

enjoying the thing they worked so hard for. The need for of progress can be the enemy of enjoying the process. There is no still ...