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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoke.com.

Greatness should be put up for display. For more than four decades, Thomas Jefferson designed and redesigned, built and rebuilt, imagined and re-imagined his Monticello estate.

The founding father who drafted the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson also drafted the Blueprints for his house without any formal training, relying on his extensive reading on architecture, particularly from ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance.

In 1789, shortly after returning from a few years stay in France, where one Paris home particularly inspired him, he renovated Monticello to add an entrance hall that doubled as a museum, showcasing artifacts representing his interests and inspirations.

It was the only space in Monticello that guests were guaranteed to see, and the 30 gold trim Windsor chairs in the Monticello entrance hall suggest that Jefferson hulk visitors would linger with the great minds that were so influential in shaping his own.

Because along with the artwork, maps, animal hides and heads, Jefferson exhibited his collection of statues.

The two most prominent in the room were buss of Voltaire and Turgat, the two French thinkers who guided his ideas about subjects like freedom, religion, law, economics and government.

It was in Europe that Jefferson once wrote, the truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually that every man here must be either a hammer or the anvil.

I have endeavored to examine more nearly the condition of the great that degree of happiness, which is enjoyed in America by every class of people.

Jefferson's library included all of Voltaire's works, so why purchase the bust as well, because he understood the power of statues.

They aren't just works of art. They are blocks of stone to remind us that someone lived and died. That's a tombstone.

Statues are guides. They represent a person who lived a life worthy of emulation. They inspire, they inform, they encourage, they stand for who we want to be.

You don't agree? Go stand in front of the Jefferson Monument in DC on an early morning. Watch the sun rise through the columns and shining on those words.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among these are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness.

Try not to feel anything. Go stand in front of the Marcus Aurelius statue in Rome or the replica at Brown University and try not to feel you are a little bit closer to the man and the incredible legacy of courage, moderation, justice and wisdom for which he lived.

We should always be seeking out moments of this kind of association, reflection and inspiration. When we see greatness, we should memorialize it. We should put it up on display on our desk, on the wall, in ink on our skin, on the home screen of our phones. However, you decide to honor the people whose example you love, put it somewhere you are guaranteed to see it every day just as Jefferson did and ask yourself am I living by the example they stand for.

And as I read that to you, I am looking at a bus to Marcus Aurelius, I have on my desk a bus of Seneca, I have on my bookshelf as well as a bus of Zeno, the founder of stoicism that I have across the room. It's these statues that have inspired me as I've written my books that I try to look at a touch at least once throughout the day.

We actually ended up adapting a version of them for for daily stoic. If you want to check out our statue of Marcus Aurelius, it's our bus to Marcus, our bus to Seneca. You can check both those out in the daily stoic store, they're not cheap, but they are handcrafted by this great statue maker and sculptor here in the United States and yes, Schubert, they are inspired actually by the statue that I have. You can check that out. Go to store.dailystoic.com.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondering Plus in Apple podcasts.

What if you were trafficked into a cult over shot nine times or fell in love with a vampire or went into a minor surgery and woke up one week later, paralyzed? What would you do?

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