“You’ll never catalog every drop of water in the sea or wrest control from tempests, so don’t be distracted by the endless mysteries and terrors of the abyss. Instead, focus on the simple, vital task of rowing your boat.” — Phil Van Treuren
Anxiety is common to all human beings, and it was something experienced by everyone . . . even ancient Stoic philosophers. The most important takeaway you should get from these Stoic quotes is not that they expect you to entirely get rid of your anxiety, but to recognize it, deal with it, and use rational thought to overcome it.
There’s a misconception about Stoicism nowadays that it somehow lets people stop having feelings or reactions to stressful occurrences. That’s not the case at all, and in fact, ancient Stoics recognized anxiety (and fear, and anger) as “initial reactions” that people can never really stop having.
It’s in how you approach and view these natural human reactions that really matter. As these Stoic quotes on anxiety will hopefully illustrate, a true practitioner of Stoicism is able to overcome initial, instinctual reactions like anxiety by quickly identifying it as unhelpful, and using reasoned judgment to bring about calm thoughts.
Stoic Quotes on Anxiety & Worrying from Marcus Aurelius
“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions; not outside.“
“Nowhere you can go is more peaceful — more free of interruptions — than your own soul.“
“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.“
“Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each one of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.“
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.“
“If then it’s not that the things you pursue or avoid are coming at you, but rather that you in a sense are seeking them out, at least try to keep your judgment of them steady, and they too will remain calm and you won’t be seen chasing after or fleeing from them.”
Stoic Quotes on Anxiety & Worrying from Epictetus
“When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?”
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”
“Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person or that person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in right now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself.”
Stoic Quotes on Anxiety & Worrying from Seneca
“It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain it’s own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest— by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.”
“For the only safe harbour in this life’s tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us.”
“True happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied, for he that is wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”