In Roman Stoicism, I saw the hard wisdom of the men who raised me. They had suffered sorrow, poverty, and discrimination. Some had been beaten, extorted, or unjustly arrested. They took pride in their capacity for work and self-sufficiency. They remembered their troubles and deprivations, but they did not define themselves by their trauma. The were fatalistic, but happy. No one had much money or property, but they felt what they had sufficed. They were suspicious of luxuries. They viewed their troubles with laughter rather than anger. Stoicism wasn’t a philosophy. It was my family.

Dana Gioia

Similar to John Stuart Mills father James, Gioia absorbed the stoic lessons from the examples the men around him lived out.

From: Sentences from Seneca pg8