Moderation Is the Highest Form of Greatness. Here’s Why. You can preorder signed copies of my new book Lives of the Stoics here. This is not a political argument. But it says something about our politics right now that the right in America is convinced that Joe Biden is a radical leftist, while the progress...

Odysseus is the greatest hero in all of literature. He fights for ten years at Troy and then, in a stroke of brilliance, manages to end the war with a clever trick. Then for another ten years he fights his way home—facing storms, temptation, a Cyclops, deadly whirlpools, food shortages, the underworld, and a six-headed monster to return to his beloved wife and son. Arriving in Ithaca, Odysseus finds his kingdom drained by thirsty ...

BY RYAN HOLIDAY It began in the East. At least, that’s what the experts think. Maybe it came from animals. Maybe it was the Chinese. Maybe it was a curse from the gods. One thing is certain: it radiated out east, west, north, and south, crossing borders, then oceans, as it overwhelmed the world. The only thing that spread faster than the contagion was the fear and the rumors. People panicked. Doctors were baffled. Government officia...

When we shopped for our first house, I told my girlfriend (now wife) that most of the decision was up to her. I had worked out what we could afford, but in terms of what house, where and what style, I wanted whatever she wanted. We were coming from New York and so everything seemed bigger in Texas. A real estate agent showed us a "small" place that was "only" 1,500 square feet. We didn’t have enough stuff to fill half of that. We en...

When you’re too busy aiming for it, you miss the moments in front of you It’s one of those lines we throw out casually: "I want to spend more ‘quality time’... " whether it’s with friends, with family, with your kids, or with yourself.While the phrase certainly comes from a good place, there’s a disconnect: The perfectionist side of our brain, fueled by movies and Instagram, wants everything to be special, to be "right." But that’s ...

One goat became two, then a whole farm, then a crash course in what really matters It started innocuously enough, as many modern tales do, with a Craigslist posting. Boredom and whimsy — that’s how my wife and I ended up driving home from Seguin, Texas, with a tiny Nigerian dwarf goat in the front seat of the car. We named her Bucket, and she lived — quite illegally, we would later learn — tucked behind the fence that surrounded our ...

There are many phases of the creative process. One is overlooked more than any of the others. Inspiration, research, production, editing (refining), release, promotion. Most of these get their due. I’m talking about the phase that comes between the inspiration and the core act of creation (and sometimes appears again briefly between the time the work is finished and the time it is released). It’s the most nerve-wracking and difficult...