The famous ones are mostly not in here
Search for Stoic quotations and you meet the same dozen lines: the obstacle becoming the way, you have power over your mind, waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Several are real and already stand elsewhere in this collection; several are modern compressions of a longer passage, tightened by whoever was making the graphic. This room was built the other way round. The translations were read first and the lines taken out of them, which is why so little of it looks familiar. Alexander of Macedon and his muleteer, when they died, were in a like condition has never been on a poster. It is also, word for word, what Marcus Aurelius wrote.
Three men, three completely different jobs
They are quoted as one voice and were nothing of the kind. Marcus Aurelius is writing to himself, in a private notebook, and the tone is a man correcting his own character where nobody can see. Epictetus was born a slave and taught in a classroom; his lines are instructions, shaped to be remembered and used. Seneca is writing letters to a named friend, at length, often about his own illness and his own fear, and he argues rather than instructs. Read them together and the differences are more useful than the agreement: the same idea arrives as self-reproach, as a drill, and as an argument.
What the translations cost
Every line here is a translation, which means every line is also a choice by a translator. Chrystal in 1902 gives Marcus Aurelius suppress the thought; other translators give take away the opinion, and the modern versions reach for remove the judgement. The Greek is the same and the English is not. Nothing dishonest is happening, but a reader who quotes a sentence as though the words themselves were the philosophy is quoting a translator. The book and section are given for that reason: they are what the sentence is anchored to when the wording varies.
What is the most famous Stoic quote?
The one everything else rests on is Epictetus: “Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.” It is the first line of section V of the Encheiridion, and the half that usually gets cut offers Socrates as the proof.
Did Marcus Aurelius really write these?
Yes. The Meditations is his private notebook, never written for publication, and the lines here are cited to book and section in George W. Chrystal's 1902 translation. What varies between versions is the English, not the source — which is why the reference matters more than the wording.
Why are the usual Stoic quotes missing from this page?
Two reasons. Some are already standing in other rooms of this collection and are not repeated. Others are modern compressions of a longer passage rather than anything a translator wrote, so they are left out rather than presented as quotations.
Where should I start reading Stoicism?
Epictetus's Encheiridion is short, blunt and designed to be used. Seneca's letters are the most readable and the most human. The Meditations is the most quoted and the strangest to read first, because it is a man talking to himself and never explains his own shorthand.