Wisdom Takes Work is a solid, somewhat familiar addition to Holiday’s lineup. True to form, he draws heavily from the classic Stoics like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, while weaving in modern examples from figures like Elon Musk and Abraham Lincoln

That said, it felt okay rather than groundbreaking—much of the core message echoes themes from his earlier books. If you’re already deep into Stoicism or Holiday’s books, it might land as a comfortable reinforcement rather than a revelation. Still, it’s worth a read for the reminders on humility and continuous growth—wisdom does take work, and Holiday makes a compelling case for putting in the effort.

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RATING: 3.3/5

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• “Disce quasi semper victurus, Vive quasi cras moriturus” Learn as if you were going to live forever, Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.

• No man was ever wise by chance. —Seneca

• We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp,” he writes. “Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.”

• It’s intelligence, intuition, experience and education, philosophy and practical understanding, awareness and wit, perspective, perspicacity, and, yes, the “prudence” that the ancients sometimes called wisdom.

• To not be made crazy by the craziness around you demands courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

• “That which worries men is not things but that which they think about them.” – Epictetus

• This is the key to life: finding the classroom that works for you, that allows you to take over your own education. Because an education is not something you “get,” it’s something you take. It’s something you make.

• “I was never a fan of people who don’t leave home,” the well-traveled Joan Didion once wrote. “It just seems like part of your duty in life.” It’s your duty to shed your exceptionalism. It’s your duty to learn, to explore, to expose. New lands generate new thoughts, make us into new people.

• Socrates said at one point. “What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable.”

• Thou shalt not follow a crowd to do evil. You are unlike anyone who has ever lived…why would you think and act like everyone else?

• Courage and wisdom are related—the former allows for the latter. If you can’t bear to engage with new information, you can’t learn. Cowards are fools, and fools are usually cowardly.

• “If anyone can refute me,” he would say, “show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.”

• “Blink your eye and look at it again,” da Vinci admonished. “That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is no more.” Fools stay at the surface. The wise want to know what lies beneath.