8 Stoic Quotes on Focus & Concentration

  • Make it your goal never to fail in your desires or experience things you would rather avoid; try never to err in impulse and repulsion; aim to be perfect also in the practice of attention and withholding judgment.

    — Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.11

  • I cannot call somebody ‘hard-working’ knowing only that they read and write. Even if ‘all night long’ is added, I cannot say it – not until I know the focus of all this energy.

    — Epictetus, Discourses 4.4.41

  • Don't put your purpose in one place and expect to see progress made somewhere else.

    — Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.17

  • First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

    — Epictetus, Discourses 3.23

  • If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.

    — Epictetus, Discourses 2.18

  • The mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply.

    — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 7.3

  • Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It's not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad.

    — Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 12.5

  • Distringit librorum multitudo (the abundance of books is distraction).

    — Seneca, Moral Letters 2.3