Ideas Worth
Sitting With

Trollope wrote forty-seven novels before breakfast, with a watch on the desk and a quota of 250 words every quarter of an hour — then told the truth about it and lost fifty years of literary standing.

One tried to understand the world. The other set out to conquer it. What the philosopher and his most famous pupil reveal about the question a life is built around.

Marcus Aurelius used it to govern an empire. Epictetus used it to survive slavery. Viktor Frankl used it to survive Auschwitz. What exactly is Stoicism — and why does it keep proving useful in the worst situations?

Napoleon Hill spent twenty years interviewing the most successful people in America and distilled what he found into one book. That was 1937. Here is what still applies — and why.

The most powerful man in the world kept a private journal he never intended anyone to read. It is still in print two thousand years later. Here is what it actually says.

On the surface they look like opposites: one built on discipline and reason, the other on energy and spirit. Strip away the different vocabularies and they are climbing toward the same summit.