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Stoicism   /stˈoʊəsˌɪzəm/   Listen
Stoicism

noun
1.
An indifference to pleasure or pain.  Synonyms: stolidity, stolidness.
2.
(philosophy) the philosophical system of the Stoics following the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Stoicism" Quotes from Famous Books



... excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation—a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the letter, and eagerly ran it over. It was from the Newgate chaplain, a very worthy, humane gentleman, and stated that, on hearing the result of the deliberations of the Privy Council, all the previous stoicism and fortitude exhibited by Jane Eccles had completely given way, and she had abandoned herself to the wildest terror and despair. As soon as she could speak coherently, she implored the governor with frantic earnestness to send for me. As this was not only quite useless in the opinion of that official, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... has brought out all the virtues of our race, both those with which we were credited—of initiative, elan, bravery, and fearlessness—and those which we were not supposed to possess—endurance, patience, and stoicism. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... It took stoicism to the Nth degree for Shirley to respond to the early telephone call next morning, from the clerk of the club. A few minutes of violent exercise, in the hand ball court, the plunge, a short swim in the natatorium and a rub down from the Swedish masseur, however, brought him around ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... she had seen, the spectacle of what seemed the end of everything, the Revolution, had so formed her character as to lead her to disdain human suffering. And this old woman, who had nothing left of life save breath, had risen to a serene philosophy, to a virile, haughty, almost satirical stoicism. Sometimes she would begin to declaim against a sorrow that seemed a little too keen; but, in the midst of her tirade, she would suddenly hurl an angry, mocking word at herself, upon which her face would at once become calm. She was cheerful with the cheerfulness of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... in effort, Eucrites, and in that intense application by which the disciples of Zeno pretend to render themselves equal to the gods, the frog, which swelled itself out to try and become as big as the ox, accomplished a masterpiece of stoicism. ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... torches and firebrands; while the children, standing beneath the bark platform, applied fire to the feet of the prisoners between the crevices. The Algonquin women were told to burn their husbands and companions; and one of them obeyed, vainly thinking to appease her tormentors. The stoicism of one of the warriors enraged his captors beyond measure. "Scream! why don't you scream?" they cried, thrusting their burning brands at his naked body. "Look at me," he answered; "you cannot make me wince. If you were in my place, you would screech like babies." At this they fell upon him ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... and have since been a wanderer. I feel that I am not lazy, that I am not afraid of work, but four years have drifted by and I have nothing to show for it. I am discouraged. Perhaps that is wrong, but tell me how I can help it. I have not the stoicism of the hunter, Wetzel, nor have I the philosophy of your brother. I could not be content to sit on my doorstep and smoke my pipe and watch the wheat and corn grow. And then, this life of the borderman, environed as it is by untold dangers, leads me, fascinates me, and yet appalls ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... physical comforts and gracious amenities of life, and possessed of a strong sense of duty and decorum—inclined, perhaps, not only to piety and self-abnegation, but also to be somewhat dour and uncompromising—were naturally attracted to Stoicism. Those of the complementary character preferred the doctrines of Epicurus. The Stoics were the Pharisees, the Epicureans the Sadducees, of pagan philosophy. As the Pharisees were the most Hebraic of the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... themselves in determining trifling questions, in which the disputants can have no interest, and which, at the close, leave them neither wiser nor better. And that this censure, is not, as some modern advocates for Stoicism have maintained, a mere calumny, but grounded upon fact, sufficiently appears from what is said by the ancients, particularly by Sextus Empiricus, concerning the logic of the Stoics. Seneca, who was himself a Stoic, candidly acknowledges this. It may, perhaps, be thought surprising that ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... have met with a late bereavement, which has entered deep into your soul. We are not called to stoicism, but to tenderness of heart and spirit. Jesus wept with the two sisters over a brother's grave. But still, the Christian's spirit must be resigned, and say, and try to say with cheerfulness, 'Not my will, but thine be done.' And Oh, my friend, great will be the wisdom ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... on the other, requiring us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer hard-hearted. Yet we are ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... we are all willing to let a public censor like P.V. run amuck whenever he likes,—so it be not down our street. I confess to a good deal of tolerance in this respect, and, when I live in No. 21, have plenty of stoicism to spare for the griefs of the dwellers in No. 23. Indeed, I agreed with our young Cato heartily in what he said about Statues. We must have an Act for the Suppression, either of Great Men, or else of Sculptors. I have not quite made up my mind which are the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... Belleisle, a high-flown lion reduced to silence and now standing at bay, much distinguishes himself in this Siege; which, for his sake, is still worth a moment's memory from mankind. He gathers himself into iron stoicism, into concentration of endeavor; suffers all things, Broglio's domineering in the first place; as if his own thin skin were that of a rhinoceros; and is prepared to dare all things. Like an excellent soldier, like an excellent citizen. He contrives, arranges; leads, covertly drives the domineering ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... are poems of a sombre yet tender philosophy, of an Epicureanism that is seldom languid, of a Stoicism that is never hard. In this world, where so much is dark, he seems to say, we must all clasp hands and move forwards, shoulder to shoulder, never forgetting the warm companionship in the presence of the blind chaotic forces that wave their ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... absence with a like stoicism. That astute matron had long and silently deprecated the regularity with which her Louis Quinze had groaned beneath one hundred and eighty pounds of ineligibility, the frequency with which a tall troup horse of spectacular gait and snortings could be descried beside her daughter's English ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... a devastating torrent of words in the manner of a public orator, bitterly denounced the punishment; John, who had merely snored (the Captain said it took two to make a conversation), bore it with the stoicism of ignorance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various

... which only the consciousness of some deep Compensating Future could give. Giving little else, however, a singular dissatisfaction obtained with the traders, and, being accompanied with a reluctance to make further advances, at last touched the gentle stoicism of the proprietors themselves. The youthful enthusiasm which had at first lifted the most ineffectual trial, the most useless essay, to the plane of actual achievement, died out, leaving them only the dull, prosaic record of half-finished ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... of the desert he lay there in the sand, unblinkingly defiant. Tortures and death, he felt, were to be his portion; but with the stoicism of the barbarian he made no sound. What his thoughts were, realizing the loss of tribesmen, capture, despoilment of the Great Pearl Star, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... [man's] Will to Life had to be intensified into unconditional Will to Power; we hold that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, arts of temptation and devilry of all kinds; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man contributes to the elevation of the species just as much as its opposite—and ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... furnishes us with the grandest and most eloquent series of truths to which, unilluminated by Christianity, the thoughts of man have ever attained. The purest and most exalted philosophic sect of antiquity was "the sect of the Stoics;" and Stoicism never found a literary exponent more ardent, more eloquent, or more enlightened than Lucius Annaeus Seneca. So nearly, in fact, does he seem to have arrived at the truths of Christianity, that to many it seemed a matter for marvel ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... we exaggerate Locke's dependence upon the earlier current of thought. The social contract is at least as old as when Glaucon debated with Socrates in the market-place at Athens. The theory of a state of nature, with the rights therein implied, is the contribution, through Stoicism, of the Roman lawyers, and the great medieval contrast to Aristotle's experimentalism. To the latter, also, may be traced the separation of powers; and it was then but little more than a hundred years since ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... the noose was adjusted the lower barrel was knocked away, and the necessary drop thus obtained. In this way the whole nine were punished. Just before death they all acknowledged their guilt by confessing their participation in the massacre at the block-house, and met their doom with the usual stoicism of their race. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... of melancholy lay hidden behind the mask of his humour it would be hard to say. His griefs were tempered by a vein of stoicism. He was a medley of contradictions. Unconventional to the point of eccentricity, his sense of his proper dignity was sound and sufficient. Though lavish in the use of money, he had a full realization of its value and made close contracts for his ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... belief in destiny becomes in the Romans stoicism. This doctrine, found in the writings of Seneca, and in the tragedies attributed to him, led to the probability that he was their author. Seneca has had many admirers and imitators in modern times. The French school of tragic poets ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... were a testing-time for Angela. Her resolutions wavered and died, confronted as she was by the terrible isolation and loneliness. Stoicism was easy enough in theory but most difficult in practice. The unchanging icy vista and the eternal silence drove her to desperation. She tried work as an antidote, and found it dulled ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... the adjuncts and helpers of men. Woman is born to trouble; and the risks that she must take grow with her. Why fret about the less or more? His own spiritual courage would not have shrunk from any burden that love might lay upon it. In his Christian stoicism—the man of the world might have called it a Christian ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... provoking apathy of all the New World aborigines. As Humboldt observed of another tribe, "their poverty, stoicism, and uncultivated state render them so rich and so free from wants of every kind, that neither money nor other presents will induce them to turn three steps out of their ways." They maintain a passive dignity in their bearing not seen in the proudest pope or emperor. They seldom laugh or ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... pedagogical significance of Stoicism and Epicureanism consists in this, that, after the moral life in public and in private were sundered from each other, the individual began to educate himself, through philosophical culture, into stability of character, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... expressed aloud, seemed also to be Dove's opinion, for he then and there made a full confession of his wicked practices, and of the cruel threats he had employed to terrify Daisy. He received his sentence, which was a severe one, with much stoicism, and, as he was led away from his place in the prisoner's dock, addressed a parting word to his affectionate and ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... emotions, his desire was, on the contrary, to avoid both those of the heart and of the senses. The admiration felt by the young traveller for charming Spanish women and beautiful Greeks did not outstep the limits of the purest poetry. Nevertheless the stoicism of twenty, with a heart, sensibility and imagination like his, could not be very firm, nor always secure from danger. He did actually meet with a formidable enemy at Malta; for he there made acquaintance with Mrs. Spencer Smith, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... than to eat them. Large earthen vessels were on the fire, boiling and stewing the horse beef, and several baskets containing fifty or sixty pair of moccasins, indicated the presence or expectation of a large party. They released the boy who had given strong evidence of the stoicism, or something else of the savage character, by commencing his breakfast upon a horse's head as soon as he found he was not to be killed, but ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... confiscated the territory of that town. Cicero then left Rome on account of his health, and travelled for two years in the East. He studied philosophy at Athens under various teachers, notably Antiochus of Ascalon, founder of the Old Academy, a combination of Stoicism, Platonism and Peripateticism. In Asia he attended the courses of Xenocles, Dionysius and Menippus, and in Rhodes those of Posidonius, the famous Stoic. In Rhodes also he studied rhetoric once more under Molo, to whom he ascribes a decisive influence upon the development of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... daylight came hope. Whether it was that the sunshine glancing on the wall made me think of Mary and all I was ready to do for her sake, or whether it was the mere return of my natural stoicism in the presence of actual necessity, I cannot say. I only know that I arose calm and master of myself. The problem of the letter and key had solved itself also. Hide them? I would not try to! Instead of ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... and the China Sea; he had seen long stretches of interminable coast-line; he had beheld misery, and glory, and all the painful scenes that wait on warfare; he had seen pestilence, and death in every shape, and all this had wrought in him a sort of stoicism, the result of long acquaintance with solitude and danger. He remembered his old love as a flower he had once admired as he passed it, a treacherous flower, with thorns that had wounded him. There are flowers that are beneficent, and flowers that are poisonous, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... importance they have not been given. Colonel Stone mentions an evening when quite a number of the chiefs dined with Colonel Pickering. He says,—"Much good humor prevailed on this occasion. The Indians laid aside their stoicism, indulged in many repartees, and manifested the keenest relish for wit and humor. Red Jacket, in particular, was conspicuous for the readiness and brilliance of his sallies." [Footnote: Col. Stone's Life and ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... the virtues of her defects, a stoicism to match her resolutions, and she was angered when she rose and saw the reflection of eyes that had looked on sorrow. She shook her head at the person in the glass and, leaning from the window and finding the garden no less lovely for the traffic of the night, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... friends, he might have allowed for the tenacity of opinion in such matters, and listened to it and replied to it with equanimity. But, as the proverb says, 'It is ill talking between a full man and a fasting:' and in Job such equanimity would have been but Stoicism, or the affectation of it, and unreal as the others' theories. Possessed with the certainty that he had not deserved what had befallen him, harassed with doubt, and worn out with pain and unkindness, he had assumed (and how natural that he should assume it) ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... contentment and amiability. Neither are slanders and falsehoods mollifying applications to a statesman inspired with an upright and noble ambition. Mr. Adams bore such assaults, ranging from the charge of having corruptly bought the Presidency down to that of being a Freemason with such grim stoicism as he could command. The disappearance and probable assassination of Morgan at this time led to a strong feeling throughout the country against Freemasonry, and (p. 209) the Jackson men at once proclaimed abroad that Adams was one of the brotherhood, and offered, if he should ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... surrounded by a numerous fleet of canoes, whose occupants were without hope of escape or strength to fight; but, with Indian stoicism, all sat waiting their inevitable doom from freebooters whom they had disappointed of their prey. As the emperor and his nobles sat here witnessing the destruction of their pumice-stone palaces and mud-built huts, and the filling up of their canals, they ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... the boat, as she was borne down by the tide against them, shipped a sea every moment, which the wind threw against the carcass of the corporal, who was now quite exhausted with more than four hours' exposure to a wintry night, the temperature being nearly down to zero. All the corporal's stoicism was gone; he talked wildly, crouched and gibbered in his fear, when he was suddenly roused by a heavy shock. He raised his head, which had sunk upon his chest, and beheld something close to him, and to the gunnel of the boat. It was a thin, tall figure, holding out his two arms at right angles, and ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... property, and wished not to cause him vexation, it was his hand that dealt the blow that sent the old priest to his grave. If you will interpret the word intolerance as firmness of principle, if you do not wish to condemn in the catholic soul of the Abbe de Sponde the stoicism which Walter Scott has made you admire in the puritan soul of Jeanie Deans' father; if you are willing to recognize in the Roman Church the Potius mori quam foedari that you admire in republican tenets,—you will understand the sorrow of the Abbe de Sponde ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... as Thurid swung his foot for the cowardly kick. The degraded Dator stood erect and motionless as a carven image. He was prepared to take whatever his former comrades had to offer in the way of insults and reproaches, and take them in manly silence and stoicism. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... King! He is swift and he is persistent; sharply discerning, fearless to resolve and perform; carries his great endowments lightly, as if they were not heavy to him. He has known hard misery, been taught by stripes; a light stoicism sits gracefully ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... James had played over the lake hole so often that they had become accustomed to it, and had grown into the habit of sinking a ball or two as a preliminary formality with much the same stoicism displayed by those kings in ancient and superstitious times who used to fling jewellery into the sea to propitiate it before they took a voyage. But today, by one of those miracles without which golf would not be golf, each of them got over with his first ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... destitution of the Roman in second century B.C. in regard to (1) his idea of God, (2) his sense of Duty. No help from Epicurism, which provided no religious sanction for conduct; Lucretius, and Epicurean idea of the Divine. Arrival of Stoicism at Rome; Panaetius and the Scipionic circle. Character of Scipio. The religious side of Stoicism; it teaches a new doctrine of the relation of man to God. Stoic idea of God as Reason, and as pervading the universe; adjustment of this to Roman ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... his elbow a friend, an invalid like himself, a man of courage and stoicism like himself; but a man in whom everything that Stevenson made delicate and rational became unbalanced and blind. The difference is, moreover, that Stevenson was quite right in claiming that he could treat his limitation as an accident; that his medicines ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... feared, his good-natured, philosophical cynicism which ridiculed foibles that he did not feel called upon to combat, his protecting love for her which was always considerate but never obsequious, which was unrestraining yet restrained her in the end. Against his cynical stoicism the waves of her childish rage beat themselves to calm, or, hurt and wounded, she wept out her childish sorrows in his comforting arms. The protecting value of it she did not know, but in Zephyr, and that was the only name by which she knew ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... and, with the curious stoicism that is born of unhappiness, she plunged straight into the matter. On the third day after Barry's disappearance she appeared at the regular meeting of the club as ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... to treat with respect the body from which life has departed. Lowest of them is a superstitious dread of death and the dead. The stoicism of the Indian, especially the northern tribes, in the face of death, has often been the topic of poets, and has often been interpreted to be a fearlessness of that event. This is by no means true. Savages have an awful horror of death; it is to them the worst ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... approaching when Maria Theresa was to die. She had for some time been failing from a disease of the lungs, and she was now rapidly declining. Her sufferings, as she took her chamber and her bed, became very severe; but the stoicism of her character remained unshaken. In one of her seasons ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... both the maids have terrible colds, and Mary would not go if you asked her. Listen! It is frightful. I promise to go in the morning if we don't get a letter, but we probably shall. Let us play checkers for a while." With a forced stoicism she essayed to distract her mother's thoughts, but with poor success. The wretched afternoon drew to a close; and immediately after a show of dining, Mrs. Levice went to bed. At Ruth's suggestion she ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... or twenty yards away, watched this dialogue with an interest which even his Indian-like stoicism could hardly conceal. When the sergeant returned to the cooking-fire, he gave him a glance which was at once watchful and deprecatory, made place for him to sit down on a junk of adobe, and offered him a corn-shuck cigarito. Meyer took it, saying, "Thank you, Schmidt," ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... To the stoicism of Vergil, steadied by a high sense of man's worth and work in the world, braced to patience and endurance for noble ends, passion—the revolt of the individual self against the world's order—seemed a light ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... quizzing Cato for his stoicism, and uses it delightfully. Horace was not more happy when, in defence of Aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men.[159] "There was one Zeno," Cicero says, "who laid down laws. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... I admire not the stoicism of Cato, more than the fortitude of the Rabbin; or rather we should applaud that of the Rabbin much more; for Cato was familiar with the animating visions of Plato, and was the associate of Cicero and of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... of the man who loses first his horse, then his home, and then his sweetheart, and consoles himself with the reflection that "more was lost at Mohacz field." The song was one of the Gadfly's especial favourites; its fierce and tragic melody and the bitter stoicism of the refrain appealed to him as no ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... ill at one period of his life. He was wonderfully nursed by his wife—who was a saint—and he endured prolonged and atrocious sufferings with the patience of a saint. He watched the growth of his fatal disease with a stoicism worthy of the sages of antiquity and he had no illusion about the implacable illness which slowly but surely would result in his premature death. A constantly increasing deafness was his greatest trouble. This cruel infirmity had made frightful progress when, in 1899, the Arenes de Beziers ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... south, the ice breaking from the cliffs and drifting out to sea and back again. Still pretty Peggy Lacey was obdurately fixed in her attitude toward the sly suggestion of Skipper John Blue. Suffer she did—that deeply; but she sighed in secret and husbanded her patience with what stoicism she could command. There were times, twilight falling on the world of sea and rock beyond the kitchen window, with the last fire of the sun failing in the west like a bright hope—there were hours when her fear of the issue was so poignant ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... old Roman creed which first drew me away from fretting memories; in its high restraint, as of a hushed yet mighty wind, it breathed a power of valiant endurance, and promised before nightfall the respite of a twilight hour. For stoicism has qualities which seem foreordained for the bracing of shy souls, as if the men who framed its austere laws had prescience of our frailty and consciously legislated to its intention. It is the philosophy of the individual standing by himself, as the shy must always stand, over against ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... was borne down by the tide against them, shipped a sea every moment, which the wind threw against the carcase of the corporal, who was now quite exhausted with more than four hours' exposure to a wintry night, the temperature being nearly down to zero. All the corporal's stoicism was gone: he talked wildly, crouched and gibbered in his fear, when he was suddenly roused by a heavy shock. He raised his head, which had sunk upon his chest, and beheld something close to him, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... reigneth," it is also, to all his trusting and obedient children, alike cheering and consolatory; and he who can relish the sweetness of our Lord's words when he spake of "the birds of the air" and the "flowers of the field," will see at once that Stoicism is immeasurably inferior, both as a philosophy and a ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... of Frensheim (Supplement. Livian, c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... to a contempt of punishment, with astonishing composure and indifference; uttering little more on these occasions than a proverbial saying, common among them, expressive of the inevitability of fate—apa buli buat? To this stoicism, their belief in predestination, and very imperfect ideas of a ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... personal hazard, he descended like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Ghent insurrection; the juvenile ardor with which the almost bedridden man arose from his sick-bed to smite the Protestants at Muhlberg; the grim stoicism with which he saw sixty thousand of his own soldiers perish in the wintry siege of Metz; all ensured him a large measure of that applause which ever follows military distinction, especially when the man who achieves it happens to wear a crown. He combined the personal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... episodes led her to Detroit, with a "fake" anarchist, of whom there are many. After a week or two of dissipation and disillusionment, Marie returned, very ill, to the "Salon," where Terry received her with his usual stoicism, and acted as trained nurse. Repentant and disgusted, Marie wrote me from ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... He knew that it was of his lost son that Robert came to speak. Heaven grant that his icy stoicism was the paltry affectation of a vain man, rather than the utter heartlessness which Robert thought it. He bowed across his finger-tips at his visitor. The trial had begun, and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... opportunity she would have made a brilliant actress, as she was naturally clever, possessing an excellent memory and being a wonderful mimic. She would enter into a bit of fun with the abandon of a child, and if occasion required the stoicism of a deacon, the whole house might be convulsed with laughter, but in Eliza's face, if she set her mind to it, you could not discern the change of a muscle. Her features were regular, and of that peculiar cast which, when she ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... morally bound to pay other people's debts. But Scott's own sanguine carelessness had been partly to blame for the Ballantyne failure; and he faced the billow as it suddenly appeared, bowed to it in grief but not in shame, and, while not pretending to any stoicism, instantly resolved to devote the remainder of his life to the repayment of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... him a question, but he shook his head, for he could only talk Flemish, and muttered something about "les Allemands," making the usual sign for throat cutting. It was curious to see that this was not done in the conventional, theatrical way, but with a grim stoicism which was not unimpressive. He was not in any kind of panic and was working hard in his fields. He meant merely to convey in gesture some expression like "those damned cutthroats of Germans." I left the Scherpenberg ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... aware of it. An absence of all straining after effect; a solicitude rather to avoid than to court observation. If there is any thing positively indicative in his expression, by which I include his manner, it is that of a good-humoured indifference, an inoffensive, unobtrusive stoicism. He would seem to have adopted the excellent advice given by the Apostle to the Thessalonians—"STUDY TO BE QUIET." This is his rule of life, and he acts upon it upon great and small occasions. He only desires that you will have the goodness to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... forced to muster all my stoicism to refrain from whimpering; Mr. Langley gave utterance to a wish, which, if ever fulfilled, will consign the cities of Cronstadt, Stockholm, and Matanzas to the same fate which has rendered Sodom, Gomorrah, and Euphemia so celebrated. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... back by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months. In time this commerce increased until it gave employment to hordes of rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane; prodigal of their money, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... haunted, too, by other stray recollections of the dismal story—the doctor driving by in the early morning who had seen the fall; the discovery of the poor broken body; Madeleine's blanched stoicism, under the fierce coercion of her mother; and that strong, silent, slow-setting tide of public condemnation, which in this instance, at least, had ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... enough to sit in silence with secretly clenched teeth, devoured by jealousy—and nobody could have guessed that his quiet deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was the supreme effort of stoicism, that the man was engaged in keeping a sinister watch on his tortures lest his strength should fail him. As before, when grappling with other forces of nature, he could find in himself all sorts of courage except the courage ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... that Maud had accepted him to be. The red man may possibly "dance beneath his red cedar tree" at the tidings of the event of one of our great horse-races, or great university matches. At all events, even if the red man preserves his usual stoicism of demeanour, his neighbours, the pale-faces, like to know all about the result of many English sports the moment they are decided. Golf, as we have said, excites less general enthusiasm; but in people who love it at all, the love is burning, consuming; they will talk golf-shop in season ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... for the latter identifying himself with her sufferings. It is possible, however, that the words But I said are misplaced and should begin the verse, in which case the Hebrew my is to be preferred to the Greek thy adopted below. If so the stoicism of 19 is remarkable. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... excellent road, but leading to no worthy or proportionate end. Yet these, as regarded morals, were the best and ultimate achievements of the pagan world. Now Christianity, said he, is the synthesis of whatever is separately excellent in either. It will abate as little as the haughtiest Stoicism of the ideal which it contemplates as the first postulate of true morality; the absolute holiness and purity which it demands are as much raised above the poor performances of actual man, as the absolute wisdom and impeccability ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... his nose with the end of her long shining braid. This always delighted the baby, for in spite of his stoicism Kazan had to sniff and sometimes to sneeze, and twig his ears. And it pleased him, too. He loved the ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... foundation of the ethical system of the Stoics is thus laid in their philosophy of nature—their Physiology and Psychology. If, therefore, we would apprehend the logical connection and unity of Stoicism, we must follow their order of thought—that is, we must ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her, together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to his stoicism. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... of commerce, was not crushed, as was the rest of Italy, under the heels of Spanish infantry, nor so drained of resource as not to have some wealth still flowing into her coffers. Life grew soberer and sterner, but it was still amply worth the living, although the relish of a little stoicism and of earnest thought no longer seemed out of place. The spirit of the Renaissance had found its way to Venice slowly; it was even more slow ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... the packet to the window—his pride forbade a more distant retreat. He glanced at some passages of the letters with an unsteady eye and an agitated mind; his stoicism, however, came in time to his aid—that philosophy which, rooted in pride, yet frequently bears the fruits of virtue. He returned towards his daughter with as firm an air as his feelings permitted him ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... aware of a young woman at his elbow; she was having difficulty in managing her tray and her belongings. There was an autumn drizzle outside and Ward had stalked along unprotected, with a woodman's stoicism in regard to wetness. The young woman had her umbrella, a small bag, and a parcel, and she was clinging to all of them, impressed by the "Not Responsible" signs which sprinkled the walls of the place. When her tray tipped at an alarming slant, as she elbowed her way from the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... gained here; but plenty of mud, and laborious hardship,—met, as we perceive, with youthful stoicism, of the derisive, and perhaps of better forms. Friedrich is twenty-two and some months, when he makes his first Campaign. The general physiognomy of his behavior in it we have to guess from these few indications. No doubt he profited by it, on the military side; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... aggravated delirium in many cases. I have known such—in one case death ensued. It is but fair to say that this death was attributed to fright. It was the result of a long whispered conversation, within sight of the patient, about an impending operation; but any one who has known the more than stoicism, the cheerful coolness, with which the certainty of an operation will be accepted by any patient, capable of bearing an operation at all, if it is properly communicated to him, will hesitate to believe that it ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale

... vaguely ominous in this stolid rejection of free food and warmth, and he wondered what had happened on the drive to nerve Jotham to such stoicism. Perhaps Zeena had failed to see the new doctor or had not liked his counsels: Ethan knew that in such cases the first person she met was likely to be held responsible for ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... or independent Indian; indeed, I hear that such avoid the neighbourhood of the train; but now and again at way stations, a husband and wife and a few children, disgracefully dressed out with the sweepings of civilisation, came forth and stared upon the emigrants. The silent stoicism of their conduct, and the pathetic degradation of their appearance, would have touched any thinking creature, but my fellow-passengers danced and jested round them with a truly Cockney baseness. I was ashamed for the thing we call civilisation. We should carry upon our ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... girl, after all! a genuine Aylett, in will and stoicism!" commented the master of the situation, beginning in his round, legible characters, the inscription he hoped never to trace again. "So endeth her first lesson ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... with its universal suppression of all interesting and queer individual traits of personality, it is almost horrid. But it imparts a remarkable incorruptibility to English life; it conserves vitality by suppressing all extremes, and it implants everywhere a kind of unassuming stoicism and respect for the rules of the great game—Life. Through its unconscious example and through its cult of games it has vastly influenced even the classes not directly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... himself took a prominent part. Upon one occasion when a native had been released from the triangle, after twenty strokes from the cat had been borne without a murmur, Du Plessis suddenly became infuriated at the stoicism of his victim, and stepping towards him knocked the released man down with his fist and spurned him with his foot. Upon another occasion a boy of ten or twelve years of age (under what circumstances ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... of blanket woven of the wool of the mountain sheep, or an outer robe of skins or furs, stained various colors and always drawn close around the body when sitting or standing. Seated on rude mats of rushes, wrapped each in his outer blanket and doubly wrapped in Indian stoicism, the warriors ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... have expected. Sometimes he has framed ideals which could be fulfilled, but only at the expense of a large proportion of natural and irrepressible human desires. Such, for example, have been the one-sided ascetic ideals of Stoicism or Puritanism, which in their attempt to give order and form to life, crush and distort a considerable portion of it. The same is true of mysticism which seeks frequently to attain life by altogether denying its instinctive animal basis. Yet though reason has led men astray, it is the only ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... water. This calamity so disheartened him that he lost all his strength. His swift-footed pursuer, Monopoide, was immediately upon him, and grasped him almost as soon as he reached the opposite shore. The naked and unarmed chief could make no resistance, and, with stoicism characteristic of his race, submitted to ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... and I know not what sad, melancholy grace. It was, as it were, a silent but intelligible last will by which a man bequeathed his lost existence to his only friend. The night must have been very hard, very solitary for him; and yet, perhaps, the pallor of his face expressed a stoicism gathered from some new sense of self-respect. Perhaps he felt that his remorse had purified him, and believed that he had blotted out his fault by his anguish and his shame. He now walked with a firm step, and since the previous evening he had ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac

... spoke, or, rather, grunted this out, he pointed to his left shoulder. It was bound about with bloody rags, and in spite of his stoicism the Indian winced as he moved ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... succeed, and changed his direction again and again till he became utterly bewildered, and, finally, sitting down on the trunk of a fallen tree, shut his eyes, opened his little mouth, and howled. It was sad, but it was natural that at so early a period of life the stoicism of the savage should be overcome by the weakness of the child. Finding after a while that howling resulted in nothing but noise, Poosk suddenly shut his mouth, and opened his eyes. There seemed to be some intimate connection between the two operations. Perhaps there ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... Ausfuehrungen aehnliche Weise." [transcriber: sic on punctuation] (1, 125; C. R. 21, 88. 93.) In reality he probably had never fully grasped the truly religious and evangelical view of Luther, which, indeed, would account for his later synergistic deviations as well as for the charges of Stoicism he preferred against Luther. After abandoning his former doctrine, he, as a rule, was noncommittal as to his exact views on election. But whenever he ventured an opinion, it savored of synergism. September 30, 1531, he wrote to Brenz: "But in the entire Apology I have avoided ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... of religion which tend to make the firmest and most effectual character are sure to prevail, all else being the same; and creeds or systems that conduce to a soft limp mind tend to perish, except some hard extrinsic force keep them alive. Thus Epicureanism never prospered at Rome, but Stoicism did; the stiff, serious character of the great prevailing nation was attracted by what seemed a confirming creed, and deterred by what looked like a relaxing creed. The inspiriting doctrines fell ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... them. The passage was full of men, and men were asleep, festooned on the stone stairs. The smell was horrible. Beyond a swinging glass door Scottish women were hurrying to and fro bandaging the men as they entered, and passing them out on the other side of the building. The Serbs waited with the stoicism of the Oriental, their long lean faces drawn with hunger, pain and fatigue. Now and again some man turned uneasily in his sleep and groaned. A detachment of "Stobarts" had found a lodging upstairs, in a bedroom with plank beds; amongst them we ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... met these inquiries, and he gave his answers with the stoicism of an Indian. As respects the separation, his excuses were very simply made, and they seemed to be sufficiently plausible. When he found that the party was discovered in its place of concealment, he naturally sought his own ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... profound bow to both of his companions, without saying a word. Such formality, under such extraordinary circumstances, actually paralysed his tongue for the moment. No wonder that he could not understand those Americans. Even Indians would have surprised him by an exhibition of such stoicism. After indulging in silent wonder for a minute or two, he joined his companions who were now busy looking out at ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... Rebecca took the note. Her stoicism was the point on which she piqued herself most. She looked very pale, and she told her niece to be composed; for Aunt Becky had a theory that feelings ought to be commanded, and that it only needed effort and resolution. So she read the note, holding her head very high, but the muscles ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... direct, man-like wisdom of all this, and was quick to appreciate his delicate tact in effacing the question of the reward without even referring to it. But his stoicism was almost appalling. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... man was weighted with his own proper load, it would have been cruel to compel the men to bear me across. Nothing remained, therefore, but to march on, all encumbered as I was with my clothing and accoutrements, into these several marshy watercourses, with all the philosophical stoicism that my nature could muster for such emergencies. But it was very uncomfortable, to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... bearing his grief with Tagalog stoicism, greeted him with the finished courtesy of the Spanish tradition and led him up the precarious slatted steps into the house. It was a ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... and hope that mantled the cheek of poor Dobbs might have melted a harder heart than Gashwiler's. But the senatorial toga had invested Mr. Gashwiler with a more than Roman stoicism towards the feelings of others, and he only fell back in his chair in the pose of conscious rectitude as Dobbs hurriedly ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... coolness of late afternoon had come. A fresh breeze was blowing from the southwest. The little command, silent save for the hoof beats of their horses, rode down to the river. The women and children looked after them and they, too, were silent. A strange Indian stoicism possessed them all. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... allegory is something obvious) when he demands it all back, with their lives, through a cruel minister (again something "speakingly" named) "Thanate." The head of this company, Clearte, on receiving the sentence, talks Stoicism for many pages, and when he is exhausted, somebody else takes up the running in such a fascinating manner that it "seemed as if he had only to go on talking to make the victims immortal!" But the atrocious ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... physical strength. He had seen what women could endure, for love's or patriotism's sake! Make but appeal to the spirit—the proud and tameless spirit—and how the flesh answered! He knew that his power with Kitty came largely from a certain stoicism, a certain hardness, mingled, as he would prove to her, with a boundless devotion. Let him carry it through—without fears—and so enlarge her being and his own! And as to responsibilities beyond, as to their later lives—let time take care of its own births. For the modern determinist ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not if you kill," he answered, with true Indian stoicism. "I am old, and have served the Sun long. Kill, but I will not be unavenged of my people; for, whether I live or die, it matters not—there is no escape ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... for half an hour, could you?" asked Quin. Then, as he glanced down and met Eleanor's eyes brimming with all those recent tendernesses, his carefully practised stoicism received ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... who rails against it, or complains that it has used him ill. He is rather one who recognizes that there is but one really valid claim, that of the universe itself. But he not only submits to this claim on account of its superiority; he makes it his own. The discipline of Stoicism is the regulation of the individual will to the end that it may coincide with the universal will. There is a part of man by virtue of which he is satisfied with what things are, whatever they be. That part, designated ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... Lloyd George, his supplanter, he has lost the earnestness which brought him to the seats of power. A domestic circle, brilliant with the modern spirit and much occupied in sharpening the wits with epigram and audacity, has proved too much for his original stoicism. He has found recreation in the modern spirit. After the day's work there has been nothing so diverting for him as the society of young people; chatter rather than conversation has been as it were prescribed for him, and when he should have been thinking ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... journal was alone left." Alas! not a word did he say about seeking consolation where alone it can be given—not a thought about another world and judgment to come. The writer seemed to pride himself on his heathen stoicism—heathen expressions of resignation were alone mentioned. His dying eyes had rested on the pages of Horace—his ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... sending to inquire after them, and whether all was over or not.' All this while, Ann was 'walking backwards and forwards', nor could they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, at prayers, 'then all was quiet'. She remarked, with stoicism, 'these things could not be helped'. Fowler came in at ten, but fled in a fright at one in the morning. By five, Mrs. Golding summoned Mrs. Pain, who had gone to bed, 'all the tables, chairs, drawers, etc., ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... to an end of this interminable Session than to stay either in office or in Parliament. The Tories are quite welcome to take everything, if they will only leave me my pen and my books, a warm fireside, and you chattering beside it. This sort of philosophy, an odd kind of cross between Stoicism and Epicureanism, I have learned, where most people unlearn all their philosophy, in ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... nor was I in the mood to refer to it. With some effort I was cheerful; spoke freely of indifferent topics, and pleased myself with the idea of my own firmness, while persuading my hearers of my good humor and my legal ability. I do not deny that I paid for these proofs of stoicism. Who does not? There is no such thing as suppressing passions which are already in action—at least, there is no such thing as suppressing them long. If the summer tempest keeps off to-day it will come to-morrow, and its force and volume is always in due proportion ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... that from the many faiths whose pure or syncretized forms made the religious background of their time. They knew about the Logos from Zoroastrianism, where beside Ahura Mazdah stood Vohu Manah, the Mind of God; from Stoicism, at the basis of whose philosophy lay the idea of the Logos; from Alexandrian Hellenism, by means of which a Jew like Philo had endeavoured to marry Greek philosophy and Hebrew orthodoxy. And the writer of the Fourth Gospel ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... every day. He listened to Mrs Fyne's objections with undisguised impatience. Why couldn't Florrie get up and have her breakfast at eight like other people? In his house the breakfast was at eight sharp. Mrs Fyne's polite stoicism overcame him at last. He had come down at a very great personal inconvenience, he assured her with displeasure, but he ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... American Indian has kind feelings—he is hospitable and generous— yet, educated to inflict, and receive, the severest tortures to, and from, his enemies, he does the first with the most savage and vindictive feelings, and submits to the latter with indifference and stoicism. He has, indeed, the kindlier feelings of his nature exercised; still, this changes him not. He has been from earliest infancy brought up to cruelty, and he cannot feel that it is wrong. Now, my position was worse. I had never seen the softer feelings of our nature called into ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... endured these persecutions with a great deal of steadiness and courage; very few, in comparison with those who remained steadfast in the faith, were the number of those who fainted under the trials and abjured their religion. It is true that these people possess, on such occasions, a stoicism and an intrepidity of which no examples are to be met with in the bulk of other nations. Neither men nor women are afraid of death. Yet an uncommon steadfastness in the faith must, at the same time, be requisite to continue in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi



Words linked to "Stoicism" :   unemotionality, philosophical theory, stoical, emotionlessness, philosophical doctrine, philosophy



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