Sources and how we verify quotes
Fake and misattributed Stoic quotes are everywhere online. Here is how we avoid them.
The rule: verbatim or not at all
Every quote on this site is extracted by software from a cached public-domain text, between two exact phrases. A second program then re-checks that the quote appears word for word at the stated place (book and section, or letter and paragraph). If either check fails, the site does not build. Quotes are never typed in by hand.
We change only punctuation, capitalisation and dashes, and we mark any gap in a quote with “…”. Words in square brackets are the translator’s own. Where a line was spoken about something specific, such as a friend’s death, we say so under the quote.
The texts we use
| Author | Work | Translation | Read it free |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marcus Aurelius | Meditations | George Long, 1862 | Project Gutenberg #15877 |
| Epictetus | Enchiridion (Handbook) | George Long (19th century) | Project Gutenberg #10661 |
| Epictetus | Golden Sayings | Hastings Crossley, 1903 | Project Gutenberg #871 |
| Seneca | Moral Letters to Lucilius | Richard M. Gummere, Loeb, 1917 | Wikisource |
| Seneca | Dialogues (On Anger, On Providence, On Peace of Mind, On the Shortness of Life, Consolations) | Aubrey Stewart, 1900 | Project Gutenberg #64576 |
These translations are in the public domain in the United States. Their wording is old-fashioned (“thou”, “thy”), which is the price of using texts anyone can read and check for free.
What we do not use
- Modern translations (they are copyrighted) and modern books about Stoicism. We may recommend such books on the books page, but we do not copy from them.
- Popular paraphrases. Many “Marcus Aurelius quotes” online are modern rewordings. For example, “You have power over your mind, not outside events” and “The obstacle in the path becomes the path” are very widely shared. We could not find either in the public-domain editions we checked, so we do not use them. The nearest real passage to the second is Meditations VIII.35, which we quote on the failure page.
- Anything we cannot trace to a book and place.
Found a mistake?
If you think a quote is wrong, tell us which one and where you found a different wording, and we will check it against the source.