Margaret R. Graver > Quotes

“For once the mind is stirred into motion, it is a slave to that which is driving it. With some things, the beginnings are in our power, but after that they carry us on by their own force, not allowing a return. Bodies allowed to fall from a height have no control of themselves: they cannot resist or delay their downward course, for the irrevocable fall has cut off all deliberation, all repentance; they cannot help but arrive where they are going, though
they could have avoided going there at all.”
― Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion

“Human beings are rational creatures, in the descriptive though not always the normative sense of the word rational-and thus every impulse we form is formed in the way characteristic of rational creatures, through a judgment of what is to be done.”
― Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion

“An example is Menelaus as depicted by Euripides. Drawing his sword, he moves toward
Helen to slay her, but then, struck by the sight of her beauty, he casts away his sword and is no longer able to control even that. Hence this reproach is spoken to him:
You, when you saw her breast, cast down your blade
and took her kiss, fondling the traitor dog.22”
― Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion