They are there to entertain. To inform. To tell you about a place you might be visiting or explain why something is the way that is.
But then there is another kind of book, one that you're supposed to come to over and over again. For Marcus Aurelius, this was Epictetus, whose Discourses he read from the time he was 25 to the time of his death. Stockdale had a similar experience after he was introduced to Stoicism. "On my bedside table, no matter what carrier I was aboard," he explained of his deployments, "were my Epictetus books: Enchiridion, Discourses, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates, and The Iliad and The Odyssey. (Epictetus expected his students to be familiar with Homer's plots.) I didn't have time to be a bookworm, but I spent several hours each week buried in them."
Of course, that's the definition of being a bookworm, and it's also the prescription that Seneca himself gave. "You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works," he wrote, "if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind."
The Stoics are not something you have read. They are something you are reading. Always. At every age, every era of your life. The world is constantly changing. We are constantly changing. Therefore what we get out of these books changes, too
That's obviously what The Daily Stoic is built around. To put the best of these master thinkers in one place, designed for daily reading, daily reflection, and daily application of timeless Stoic wisdom. When we released it 10 years ago, we could not have dreamed that millions of people would be reading it everyday all over the world but they are. It is consistently one of Amazon's Top 20 Most Read books each morning for this reason—people like you, crack it open and spend a few minutes meditating on what Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus and Cato laid down all those centuries ago.
Bound in a genuine leather cover and printed on premium Munken cream paper (the best paper available honestly), it's a book you'd be proud to display on your shelves even after decades of picking it up and reading it every day.
Because that's what this philosophy is meant to be. Not something you tear through and shelve, but wisdom that you sit with. That you digest slowly. That you bring with you. That you live with—and let live inside you.
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