He was a young man. It was a challenging time. There was a lot going on in the world. All we know is that sometime in the early second century AD, Junius Rusticus gave Marcus Aurelius a gift. "The remembrances of Epictetus," as Marcus would refer most gratefully to the book Rusticus gave him, "which he supplied me with out of his own library."
How well-worn this copy must have become! How helpful the insights of a former slave must have been to a man who was about to become yoked to incredible responsibility and a crushing burden. Rusticus had taught Marcus to never be satisfied with just "getting the gist" of things he read, encouraging him to read deeply, repeatedly, and forcefully. Considering how many times Marcus quotes Epictetus from memory in Meditations, it's likely that he treated this copy of Discourses like a bible, returning to it time and time again.
We can imagine that Seneca's copies of Zeno, Cleanthes, Chryssipus, and Epicurus must have been similarly well-worn. "You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works," he advised Lucillius, "if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind." More recently, future Admiral James Stockdale had almost the exact experience as Marcus when he was given a copy of Epictetus by one of his professors at Stanford. Soon after, Stockdale was deplored on three seven-month missions in the waters off Vietnam. "But on my bedside table, no matter what carrier I was aboard," Stockdale said, "were my Epictetus books." And it was Epictetus he turned to in that harrowing crucible that he experienced as a POW.
So for thousands of years that's what the Stoic texts have been—resources, solace, a secret weapon. And as it happens, this is the tradition that The Daily Stoic has been lucky enough to find its way into. Back in 2016, we thought it was pretty remarkable that despite more than 2,000 years of this Stoic tradition of keeping this philosophy always at hand, no one had ever put the best of the Stoics in one book. It's been pretty incredible (and humbling) to see the success it's had since its release, having now sold millions of copies in more than 30 languages. The book has spent more weeks on the bestseller list than any other book about Stoicism ever. But even better, almost every week it's one of the most read books on Amazon, meaning people are actually picking it up and reading it on a daily basis. And have been in some cases for 8 years in a row!
In celebration of that—to help make Stoicism accessible to you and everyone you know, the ebook is $2.99 in the US (and on sale in the UK) for the next week if you haven't picked one up yet! It's also why we had to create a leather edition…because after eight years, some people's hardcovers were falling apart.
Stoicism is designed to be a daily practice, part of our daily routines. It's not a philosophy you read once and magically understand at the soul-level. No, it's a lifelong pursuit that requires diligence and repetition and concentration. (Pierre Hadot called it spiritual exercising). That's one of the benefits of the page-a-day (with monthly themes) format we organized the Stoics into (and the weekly themes in The Daily Stoic Journal). It's putting one important thing up for you to review—to have at hand—and to fully digest. Not in passing. Not sporadically. But every single day over the course of a year, and preferably year in and year out. And if Epictetus is right, it's something you're supposed to keep within reach at all times—which is why a collection of the greatest hits, presented daily, was so appealing to us.
So here we are, at the beginning of a year just as challenging as Marcus Aurelius' time, and we hope you'll give The Daily Stoic a chance, in print or with this discounted ebook. And that you'll pick up the Stoic practice of journaling this year with The Daily Stoic Journalor some other notebook. Or make your own greatest hits and your own study plan of the Stoics that you keep and carry with you wherever you go this year.
Because if 2025 is anything like 2024…or any other year since time immemorial, you're going to need it.
And if you have and are in year three or four or five with The Daily Stoic, it might be time for you to pick up a copy of our premium leatherbound edition. After hearing from countless readers who crack open their hardcopies every day, we decided to create a version with a level of quality not possible on mass produced books.
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