Sometimes self-love shows up as the willingness to release people who have no interest in learning how to love you. You deserve to be handled with care.
~ Clark C. Michell
Spell the Month in Books – JANUARY 2026
Hi there, Homo sapiens! I’m doing Spell the Month in Books for the first time in a long while. The idea is to spell the month in books using the first letter in the first word of a title and it was originally created by Jana @ Reviews From the Stacks.
Today, I’m not going with the theme “new” but instead I’ve decided to include non-fiction books. Let’s get started, shall we?
J – Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
A – American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web by Nick Bilton
N – Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
U – Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
A – All In, An Autobiography by Billie Jean King
R – Renegades: Born in the USA by Barack Obama & Bruce Springsteen
Y – Young Queens by Leah Redmond Chang
How did you spell the month of January in books?
Quote of the Week (2026-3)
Your wound is probably not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility.
~ Denice Envall
Quote of the Week (2026-2)
The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability.
~ Ram Dass
Quote of the Week (2026-1)
You are the only person who can love yourself wholly and completely. Don’t rely on others to fill that space.
~ Cynthia Occelli
2025 Five-Star Reads
Hello there, homo sapiens! Happy new year!
Looking back on 2025, it was definitely a busy year at work and a challenging one in my personal life. Through it all, books were my go-to-escape (as always) — something I could always come back to no matter how hectic things got. Some made me laugh, some made me think and reflect, others helped me unwind and a few left a lasting mark on me.
So today, I want to share my five-star reads from the past year — stories that carried me through and made the year a little brighter.
The Daily Stoic – Get Active in Your Own Rescue, 31-Dec-2025
Stop wandering about! You aren’t likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you’ve collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue — if you care for yourself at all — and do it while you can.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.14
The Daily Stoic – Taking the Bite Out of It, 30-Dec-2025
To bear trials with a calm mind
robs misfortune of its strength and burden.~ Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus, 231-232
The Daily Stoic – Give Thanks, 29-Dec-2025
In all things we should try to make ourselves be as grateful as possible. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves, in a manner in which justice, commonly held to belong to others, is not. Gratitude pays itself back in large measure.
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 81.19
Quote of the Week
I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.
~ J.D. Salinger
The Daily Stoic – On Being Remembered, 28-Dec-2025
Everything lasts for a day, the one who remembers and the remembered.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.35
The Daily Stoic – Don’t Let Your Soul Go First, 27-Dec-2025
It’s a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.29
The Daily Stoic – Life is Long — If You Know How to Use It, 26-Dec-2025
It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it’s given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it’s poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it’s employed to no good end, we’re finally driven to see that it has passed by before we even recognized it passing. And so it is — we don’t receive a short life, we make it so.
~ Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 1.3-4a
The Daily Stoic – Don’t Burn the Candle at Both Ends, 25-Dec-2025
The mind must be given relaxation — it will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced—for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break — so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.
~ Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 17.5
The Daily Stoic – Meaningless… Like a Fine Wine, 24-Dec-2025
You know what wine and liqueur tastes like. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand bottles pass through your bladder — you are nothing more than a filter.
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 77.16
The Daily Stoic – What Are You So Afraid of Losing?, 23-Dec-2025
You are afraid of dying. But, come now, how is this life of yours anything but death?
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 77.18
The Daily Stoic – Stake Your Own Claim, 22-Dec-2025
For it’s disgraceful for an old person, or one in sight of old age, to have only the knowledge carried in their notebooks. Zeno said this… what do you say? Cleanthes said that… what do you say? How long will you be compelled by the claims of another? Take charge and stake your own claim — something posterity will carry in its notebook.
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 33.7
Quote of the Week
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
~ Ayn Rand
The Daily Stoic – What Do You Have to Show for Your Years?, 21-Dec-2025
Many times an old man has no other evidence besides his age to prove he has lived a long time.
~ Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 3.8b
The Daily Stoic – Fear the Fear of Death, 20-Dec-2025
Do you then ponder how the supreme of human evils, the surest mark of the base and cowardly, is not death, but the fear of death? I urge you to discipline yourself against such fear, direct all your thinking, exercises, and reading this way — and you will know the only path to human freedom.
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.26.38-39
The Daily Stoic – Human Scale, 19-Dec-2025
Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share. Think about the expanse of time and how brief — almost momentary — the part marked for you. Think of the workings of fate and
how infinitesimal your role.~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.24
The Daily Stoic – What Comes to Us All, 18-Dec-2025
Both Alexander the Great and his mule-keeper were both brought to the same place by death— they were either received into the all-generative reason, or scattered among the atoms.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.24
The Daily Stoic – Know Thyself – Before It’s Too Late, 17-Dec-2025
Death lies heavy upon one
who, known exceedingly well by all,
dies unknown to himself.~ Seneca, Thyestes, 400
The Daily Stoic – Everlasting Good Health, 16-Dec-2025
I tell you, you only have to learn to live like the healthy person does… living with complete confidence. What confidence? The only one worth holding, in what is trustworthy, unhindered, and can’t be taken away — your own reasoned choice.
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.26.23b-24
The Daily Stoic – A Simple Way to Measure Our Days, 15-Dec-2025
This is the mark of perfection of character—to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.69
Quote of the Week
There’s nothing that makes you more insane than family. Or more happy, or more exasperated, or more secure.
~ Jim Butcher
The Daily Stoic – What We Should Know by the End, 14-Dec-2025
“Soon you will die, and still you aren’t sincere, undisturbed, or free from suspicion that external things can harm you, nor are you gracious to all, knowing that wisdom and acting justly are one and the same.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.37
The Daily Stoic – It’s Just a Number, 13-Dec-2025
You aren’t bothered, are you, because you weigh a certain amount and not twice as much? So why get worked up that you’ve been given a certain lifespan and not more? Just as you are satisfied with your normal weight, so you should be with the time you’ve been given.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.49
The Daily Stoic – The Beat Goes On, 12-Dec-2025
Walk the long gallery of the past, of empires and kingdoms succeeding each other without
number. And you can also see the future, for surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It’s all one whether we’ve experienced forty years or an aeon. What more is there to see?~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.49
The Daily Stoic – Dignity and Bravery, 11-Dec-2025
As Cicero says, we hate gladiators if they are quick to save their lives by any means; we favor them if they show contempt for their lives.
~ Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 11.4b
The Daily Stoic – Don’t Sell Yourself Too Cheaply, 10-Dec-2025
I say, let no one rob me of a single day who isn’t going to make a full return on the loss.
~ Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 1.11b
The Daily Stoic – Spendthrifts of Time, 09-Dec-2025
Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.
~ Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 3.1-2
The Daily Stoic – Don’t Hide from Your Feelings, 08-Dec-2025
It’s better to conquer grief than to deceive it.
~ Seneca, On Consolation to Helvia, 17.1b
Quote of the Week
Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy and the greatest of these is Confidence.
~ Walt Disney
The Daily Stoic – The Cards We’re Dealt, 07-Dec-2025
Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.56-57
The Daily Stoic – The Sword Dangles Over You, 06-Dec-2025
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, Meditations, 4.17
The Daily Stoic – The Benefits of Sobering Thoughts, 05-Dec-2025
Keep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible— by doing so, you’ll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire.
~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 21
The Daily Stoic – You Don’t Own That, 04-Dec-2025
Anything that can be prevented, taken away, or coerced is not a person’s own—but those things that can’t be blocked are their own.
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.3
The Daily Stoic – The Philosopher as an Artisan of Life and Death, 03-Dec-2025
Philosophy does not claim to get a person any external possession. To do so would be beyond its field. As wood is to the carpenter, bronze to the sculptor, so our own lives are the proper material in the art of living.
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 1.15.2
The Daily Stoic – Don’t Mind Me, I’m Only Dying Slow, 02-Dec-2025
Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.11.1
The Daily Stoic – Pretend Today is the End, 01-Dec-2025
Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. . . . The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 101.7b-8a
Quote of the Week
Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
~ Vaclav Havel
The Daily Stoic – Follow the Logos, 30-Nov-2025
The person who follows reason in all things will have both leisure and a readiness to act— they are at once both cheerful and self-composed.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.12b
The Daily Stoic – You’re Going to be Ok, 29-Nov-2025
Don’t lament this and don’t get agitated.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.43
The Daily Stoic – It’s Not on Them, It’s On You, 28-Nov-2025
If someone is slipping up, kindly correct them and point out what they missed. But if you can’t, blame yourself—or no one.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.4
The Daily Stoic – The Pleasure of Tuning Out the Negative, 27-Nov-2025
How satisfying it is to dismiss and block out any upsetting or foreign impression, and
immediately to have peace in all things.~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.2
The Daily Stoic – The Altar of No Difference, 26-Nov-2025
We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.15
The Daily Stoic – Funny How That Works Out, 25-Nov-2025
As for me, I would choose being sick over living in luxury, for being sick only harms the body, whereas luxury destroys both the body and the soul, causing weakness and incapacity in the body, and lack of control and cowardice in the soul. What’s more, luxury breeds injustice because it also breeds greediness.
~ Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 20.95.14-17
The Daily Stoic – Train to Let Go of What’s Not Yours, 24-Nov-2025
Whenever you experience the pangs of losing something, don’t treat it like a part of yourself but as a breakable glass, so when it falls you will remember that and won’t be troubled. So too, whenever you kiss your child, sibling, or friend, don’t layer on top of the experience all the things you might wish, but hold them back and stop them, just as those who ride behind triumphant generals remind them they are mortal. In the same way, remind yourself that your precious one isn’t one of your possessions, but something given for now, not forever . . .
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.84-86a
Quote of the Week
And books, they offer one hope — that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.
~ Anne Rice
HappymessHappiness 