Stoic: Morning and Evening

Two points in the day, every day, from the texts themselves.

In the morning: a short passage, two plain questions about the day ahead, and the two columns of the Manual's first chapter, what is in your power and what is not. You fill the columns; the app does not sort anything for you.

In the evening: the lines Epictetus quotes in Discourses III, 10, word for word, and the three questions they ask. How have I erred? What have I done? What have I left undone?

Around the practice, the whole library: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and the Discourses, the Manual and the Fragments of Epictetus.

THE PRACTICE
• A passage for the morning and a longer one for the evening, chosen by date, never repeated within sixty days
• The two columns of Manual 1, in your own words
• The evening review in the words of the verse, with a place for notes
• A private notebook that stays on your phone and is never read, analysed or sent anywhere
• Optional reminders at the hours you choose
• A count of the days you practised, which only grows. No run of days to keep, and a missed day is never mentioned

THE LIBRARY
• Meditations, tr. George Long (1862), in twelve books
• The Discourses, the Manual (Enchiridion) and the Fragments, tr. P. E. Matheson (1916)
• Every passage carries its translator and year
• The text is not modernised: it reads as the translators wrote it
• A reader with adjustable type, your place kept in each work, bookmarks and search across both translations

LORE
• Short articles on the practice: the two columns, the evening verse, who translated the texts, and why Seneca is not here yet
• A glossary of the Greek terms (prohairesis, hegemonikon, apatheia and others), each with a passage where it can be seen at work and a note on how translators differ

WHAT IT LEAVES OUT
No rating of how you feel, no charts, no questionnaires, no badges. This is a book and two practices from it, nothing more.

The copy of the Meditations the app is built from breaks off partway through Book Twelve; the app says so where the text ends.

Free to install, with ads. The morning and the evening are free for good. A single one-time purchase opens the full library, search, the whole notebook with export, and removes the ads.