In these Stoic quotes about family, parents, and children, we'll examine how the ancient Stoics and other great thinkers viewed the closest relationships we hold in life.
Stoicism is a practical philosophy, which means that it is meant to be applied to your day-to-day life. What better place to start incorporating Stoic ideas than to the way you relate to your family?
In this collection of quotes, we see the varied views that different Stoics have on the topic of children. While Epictetus is largely focused on the education of children, Marcus Aurelius discusses his own children in relation to fate, and Seneca the Younger touches on the bittersweet reality of children growing older.
We've also included several quotes from Marcus Tullius Cicero, who, though willing to accept Academic Skepticism in some factions of thought, embraced Stoicism in other areas.
"If I and my two children cannot move the gods, the gods must have their reasons."
– Marcus Aurelius
"Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?"
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Ask yourself, "How are my thoughts, words and deeds affecting my friends, my spouse, my neighbor, my child, my employer, my subordinates, my fellow citizens?"
– Epictetus
"Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children."
– Marcus Aurelius
"What society does to its children, so will its children do to society."
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"What is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction."
– Epictetus
"So with our children, their growing up brings wider fruits but their infancy was sweeter."
– Seneca the Younger
"Who is not attracted by bright and pleasant children, to prattle, to creep, and to play with them?"
– Epictetus
"The dutifulness of children is the foundation of all virtues."
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"It is a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but are remembering and recalling them."
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind."
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent."
– Carl Jung
"It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself."
– Theodore Roosevelt
"So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky."
– William James
"Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk."
– Carl Jung
"Every child has inside him an aching void for excitement and if we don't fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and good for him, he will fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and which isn't good for him."
– Theodore Roosevelt
"Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society."
– Benjamin Franklin
"If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education."
– Thomas Jefferson
In Letters From a Stoic, On Anger, and other collections of writings, we gain access to Seneca's view on the best way to raise children. Some of the advice he offers includes curbing children from arrogance while encouraging them to imagine great things for themselves, offering praise but not excessively, and exposing them to good role models.
As we can see in the first quote below, he also believed that you aren't doing a child any favors by giving them everything they want and not allowing them to face the reality of life's difficulties.
“The one to whom nothing was refused, whose tears were always wiped away by an anxious mother, will not abide being offended."
– Seneca the Younger
"Childhood, therefore, should be kept far from all contact with flattery; let a child hear the truth, sometimes even let him fear, let him be respectful always, let him rise before his elders. Let him gain no request by anger; when he is quiet let him be offered what was refused when he wept. Let him, moreover, have the sight but not the use of his parents’ wealth. When he has done wrong, let him be reproved … Above all, let his food be simple, his clothing inexpensive, and his style of living like that of his companions. The boy will never be angry at some one being counted equal to himself, whom you have from the first treated as the equal of many."
– Seneca the Younger
"What children need is the conviction that satisfaction can and must be earned. ... Spoiled children do not learn the must."
– Isabel Briggs Myers
"Those who have lived in a house with spoiled children must have a lively recollection of the degree of torment they can inflict upon all who are within sight or hearing."
– Maria Edgeworth
"If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children."
– Confucius
It's terrifyingly easy these days to remain a child far into adulthood. In this collection of quotes, Marcus Aurelius and others discuss childishness in adulthood, understanding the change of leaving childhood as death, and more.
"What use do I put my soul to? It is a serviceable question this, and should frequently be put to oneself. How does my ruling part stand affected? And whose soul have I now? That of a child, or a young man, or a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, of cattle or wild beasts."
– Marcus Aurelius
"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history? "
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?"
– Marcus Aurelius
"Everything is born from change. ...there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it. All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it. You think the only seeds are the one that make plants and children? Go deeper."
– Marcus Aurelius
"Sorrow makes us all children again."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius goes through a list of the people he has known that have taught him important lessons and virtues in life, his father being one of them. He was well aware of the infinite cycle of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, in this universe that delights in change.
“I walk in Nature's way until I shall lie down and rest, breathing my last in this from which I draw my daily breath, and lying down on this from which my father drew his vital seed, my mother her blood, my nurse her milk; from which for so many years I am fed and watered day by day; which bears my footstep and my misusing it for so many purposes.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Even if there shall appear in you a likeness to him who, by reason of your admiration, has left a deep impress upon you, I would have you resemble him as a child resembles his father, and not as a picture resembles its original; for a picture is a lifeless thing.”
– Seneca the Younger
"The gods gave me a father who ruled over me and rid me of any trace of arrogance and showed me that one can live in a palace without bodyguards, extravagant attire, chandeliers, statues, and other luxuries. He taught me that it is possible to live instead pretty much in the manner of a private citizen without losing any of the dignity and authority a ruler must possess to discharge his imperial duties effectively."
– Marcus Aurelius
“This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus—how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends.”
– Seneca the Younger
"My being consists of matter and form, that is, of soul and body; annihilation will reach neither of them, for they were never produced out of nothing. The consequence is, that every part of me will serve to make something in the world; and this again will change into another part through an infinite succession of change. This constant method of alteration gave me my being, and my father before me, and so on to eternity backward: for I think I may speak thus, even though the world be confined within certain determinate periods."
– Marcus Aurelius
"From my grandfather's father, I learned to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent."
– Marcus Aurelius
“And the things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant supply, he [my father] used without arrogance and without excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation, and when he had them not, he did not want them.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich."
– Marcus Aurelius
"The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them."
– Confucius
Though the Stoics don't discuss the topic of motherhood at any great length, they often invoke the notion in all its poetic and metaphorical depth.
“To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Fortune recently took away her mother, but your love will mean that she will only grieve over her mother’s loss but not suffer for it.”
– Seneca the Younger
The Stoics are always reminding us to steer clear of anger when we relate to others, and they discuss the role of parents in relation to children no differently. They were also concerned with the education of children, as evidenced by the first quote here by Epictetus.
"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."
– Epictetus
"This rather is what you should think—that no one should be angry at the mistakes of men. For tell me, should one be angry with those who move with stumbling footsteps in the dark? With those who do not heed commands because they are deaf? With children because forgetting the observance of their duties they watch the games and foolish sports of their playmates? Would you want to be angry with those who become weary because they are sick or growing old? ... That you may not be angry with individuals, you must forgive mankind at large, you must grant indulgence to the human race."
– Seneca the Younger
"Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself."
– Marcus Aurelius
"Such is more or less the way of the wise man: he retires to his inner self, is his own company. So long in fact as he remains in a position to order his affairs according to his own judgement, he remains self-content even when he marries, even when he brings up his children."
– Seneca the Younger
"Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth."
– Epictetus
"Patria est communis omnium parens.
Our country is the common parent of all."– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"They never used to teach their children anything which could be learned in a reclining posture. That kind of training, nevertheless, doesn‟t teach or foster moral values any more than the other. What‟s the use, after all, of mastering a horse and controlling him with the reins at full gallop if you‟re carried away yourself by totally unbridled emotions? What‟s the use of overcoming opponent after opponent in the wrestling or boxing rings if you can be overcome by your temper?"
– Seneca the Younger
“Always remember what Heraclitus said: 'The death of earth is the birth of water, the death of water is the birth of atmosphere, the death of atmosphere is fire, and conversely.' Remember, too, his image of the man who forgets the way he is going; and: 'They are at variance with that with which they most continuously have converse (Reason which governs the Universe), and the things they meet with every day appear alien to them'; and again: 'We suppose that we act and speak'; and: 'We must not be like children with parents,' that is, accept things simply as we have received them.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“We like to say that we don’t get to choose our parents, that they were given by chance—yet we can truly choose whose children we’d like to be.”
– Seneca the Younger
"Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves."
– Carl Jung
It's easy in life to focus on our work and ambitions and put off spending time with our families until some later date when we'll magically have more time. Marcus Aurelius reminds us of our duty to the people in our lives while also encouraging us to embrace our fate and "love the people with whom fate brings you together."
“Busyness is no excuse for neglecting our duties to family, friends, and community.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.”
– Marcus Aurelius
"No living being is held by anything so strongly as by its own needs. Whatever therefore appears a hindrance to these, be it brother, or father, or child, or mistress, or friend, is hated, abhorred, execrated."
– Epictetus
“I am made up of substance and what animates it, and neither one can ever stop existing, any more than it began to. Every portion of me will be reassigned as another portion of the world, and that in turn transformed into another. Ad infinitum. I was produced through one such transformation, and my parents too, and so on back. Ad infinitum."
– Marcus Aurelius
"The first bond of society is the marriage tie; the next our children; then the whole family of our house, and all things in common."
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"How hast thou carried thyself hitherto towards the Gods? towards thy parents? towards thy brethren? towards thy wife? towards thy children? towards thy masters? thy foster-fathers? thy friends? thy domestics? thy servants? Is it so with thee, that hitherto thou hast neither by word or deed wronged any of them? Remember withal through how many things thou hast already passed, and how many thou hast been able to endure; so that now the legend of thy life is full, and thy charge is accomplished. Again, how many truly good things have certainly by thee been discerned? how many pleasures, how many pains hast thou passed over with contempt? how many things eternally glorious hast thou despised? towards how many perverse unreasonable men hast thou carried thyself kindly, and discreetly?”
– Marcus Aurelius
"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."
– Marcus Aurelius
"Our duties naturally emerge from such fundamental relations as our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, our state or nation. Make it your regular habit to consider your roles-parent, child, neighbor, citizen, leader-and the natural duties that arise from them. Once you know who you are and to whom you are linked, you will know what to do."
– Epictetus
"When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion, it’s a kind of death. And it doesn’t harm us. Think about your life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every transformation a kind of dying. Was that so terrible? Think about life with your grandfather, your mother, your adopted father. Realize how many other deaths and transformations and endings there have been and ask yourself: Was that so terrible? Then neither will the close of your life be—its ending and transformation.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“A family formed by crime must be broken by more crime.”
– Seneca the Younger
“Recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from “good families.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“From Sextus, a benevolent disposition, and the example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, and the idea of living conformably to nature; and gravity without affectation, and to look carefully after the interests of friends, and to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration.”
– Marcus Aurelius
"...Love of family, love of truth, love of justice, and (thanks to him!) to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus; and the conception of a state with one law for all, based upon individual equality and freedom of speech, and of a sovereignty which prizes above all things the liberty of the subject."
– Marcus Aurelius
"To support mother and father, to cherish wife and children, and to be engaged in peaceful occupation - this is the greatest blessing."
– Gautama Buddha
"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family."
– Thomas Jefferson
"A happy union with wife and child is like the music of lutes and harps."
– Confucius
In Epictetus' Discourses, he said that one should respond to the question of where one is from with "I am a citizen of the world." The Stoics incorporated the notion of cosmopolitanism into their practical philosophy and encouraged people to understand that all humans are interdependent and interconnected.
“With each person you meet, remind yourself that you share a common humanity. You are members of the same family. They may not know this, but you do—so show them by the way you treat them.”
– Marcus Aurelius
"We should have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing that only the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood and suffering."
– Seneca the Younger
“A human being has close kinship with the whole human race -- not a bond of blood or seed, but a community of mind. And you have forgotten this too, that every man's mind is a god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our own property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source; that all is as thinking makes it so; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.”
– Marcus Aurelius
"All men are children, and of one family."
– Henry David Thoreau
"Like a mother who protects her child, her only child, with her own life, one should cultivate a heart of unlimited love and compassion towards all living beings."
– Gautama Buddha
Every parent's worst fear is outliving their children. For this reason, parents might be prone to skip this section altogether. One might think that only someone who hasn't lost children of their own could take the proposed Stoic approach to the loss of a child.
The truth is, though, that Marcus Aurelius himself was alive to experience the death of eight of his thirteen children. Ben Franklin, the source of our final quote, lost a four-year-old son in 1736 to smallpox.
In Stoicism, we are invited to meditate on our death and the deaths of those we love. We are reminded that nothing is permanent and that "change is Nature's delight," no matter how devastating and tragic that change might feel at the time.
“Try praying differently, and see what happens: Instead of asking for ‘a way to sleep with her,’ try asking for ‘a way to stop desiring to sleep with her.’ Instead of ‘a way to get rid of him,’ try asking for ‘a way to not crave his demise.’ Instead of ‘a way to not lose my child,’ try asking for ‘a way to lose my fear of it.’
– Marcus Aurelius
“Independence and unvarying reliability, and to pay attention to nothing, no matter how fleetingly, except the logos. And to be the same in all circumstances—intense pain, the loss of a child, chronic illness. And to see clearly, from his example, that a man can show both strength and flexibility. His patience in teaching. And to have seen someone who clearly viewed his expertise and ability as a teacher as the humblest of virtues. And to have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful."
– Marcus Aurelius
“Not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always, whether in the sharpest pains, or after the loss of child, or in long diseases, to be still the same man.”
– Marcus Aurelius
"Never, in any case, say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?"
– Epictetus
"A man is not completely born until he is dead. Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals, a new member added to their happy society?"
– Benjamin Franklin
Even when dealing with a practical philosophy like Stoicism, it's easy to get lost in the clouds of ideas rather than actually applying the concepts to our daily life. We can read Stoic blogs, explore Stoic quotes, and listen to Stoic podcasts all we want, but we're missing the point if we don't take the ideas and use them to understand ourselves and take action in life.
Whether you are thinking about your relationship with your parents, your children, your siblings, or friends you're so close with, they may as well be family, and these Stoic quotes can help you think about how you can best "love the people with whom fate brings you together."
We encourage you to share this article on Twitter and Facebook. Just click those two links - you'll see why.
It's important to share the news to spread the truth. Most people won't.
