The Stoic Handbook by Jon Brooks cover image

A Stoic Life: Real-world Applications of Stoic Principles with Donald Robertson

The Stoic Handbook by Jon Brooks

CHAPTER

The Power of Involuntary Emotion

There's a famous passage in a fragment from Epictetus that is referred to, it's in a story by a Roman author called Aulis Gellius. And he tells a story about Stoic teacher who was on a ship going from Greece to Italy and he was caught in a storm. He turned pale, but he remained silent, and his hands were shaking, and everyone else was freaking out and screaming because they all thought they were going to die. But the stoic could calm down. The founders of Stoicism had taught this distinction between involuntary and voluntary aspects of emotion. We're not like sto- we're not made from stone, like we have feelings and stuff,

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