Marble: Stoic Quotes Widget

iOSComing soon

One Stoic passage a day, cited, on marble

Marble puts one passage from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca or Epictetus on your Home Screen and Lock Screen. Each one is quoted from a translation and cited to its book and section in a small line underneath, so nothing on it is a quote someone made up and pinned on a Stoic. It sits on a slab of marble, or on a painting from a museum’s public-domain collection.

It is not released. It is going to App Review, and there is no App Store listing and no release date yet.

App Store artwork headed 'Marcus, Seneca, Epictetus. One Stoic passage, every day': an iPhone showing Nº 116, Marcus Aurelius, 'The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.' on a landscape painting — The day’s passage, the same for everyone.

App Store artwork headed 'Home and Lock Screen widgets. Wisdom on your Home Screen': a medium Marble widget with a Seneca passage raised above an iPhone Home Screen of smaller widgets — The widget is the product.

App Store artwork headed 'Classic translations. Every word, sourced': an iPhone on white marble showing a Marcus Aurelius passage, its source Meditations V, 16 enlarged below as work, book and section — Every passage carries its work, book and section.

App Store artwork headed 'The year, your life. Memento mori': an iPhone Home Screen with Year widgets at 93 percent and Memento Mori widgets reading 17,265 days left — Two widgets that count time.

App Store artwork headed 'Nº 1 to Nº 365. Collect the year, day by day': the Collection screen, 74 of 365, a grid of numbered marble tiles — A year of days, collected one by one.

App Store artwork headed 'Lock Screen, daily reminder. Right on your Lock Screen': a Lock Screen with a Seneca passage under the clock, a year ring at 72 percent, and a reminder notification for Nº 264, Seneca — Under the clock, and an optional reminder each morning.

One passage for each day

Every day of the year has its own passage, numbered by the day: Nº 278 is the 278th. Everyone using Marble meets the same passage on the same day, like reading the same page of a calendar.

Open the app on a day and that day’s piece joins your collection. By the end of the year it is a set of 365. A day you miss stays an empty tile; there is no streak to lose.
The widget keeps the day’s passage until midnight, so it has the whole day to sink in. It can change every 1, 2, 4 or 6 hours instead.
Swipe for more. The main screen has more passages behind the day’s one, filtered by author, and the widget follows what you read there.

Every word sourced

There are 764 passages: Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Epictetus’s Enchiridion, and Seneca’s essays and letters to Lucilius. The English is from the classic translations of George Long, Aubrey Stewart and Richard M. Gummere, the Spanish from older Spanish translations, and the Vietnamese is Marble’s own. The app shows the language of your iPhone, or the one you pick.

A passage that looks wrong can be reported from Settings. The email it opens already names the passage, the translation and the app version.

Five stones and forty paintings

Carrara, Nero, Travertine, Verde and Fragment are five looks with one layout; Auto uses Carrara in light mode and Nero in dark. Behind the stone can go a painting — one, a group such as moonlight or storms, or all forty, one for each passage. They are public-domain works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access collection, credited under each one.

A closer look

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The day’s passage

One passage for each day of the year, the same for everyone, with its source underneath.

Marble’s main screen on a landscape painting: author chips All, Marcus, Seneca and Epictetus, then Nº 116, Sun, Apr 26, Marcus Aurelius, “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.” and the source Meditations VI, 6, with Save, Share and Collection icons at the bottom

The day numbers, the dates and the collection in these screens were set up for the screenshots.

Widgets

The passage widget, small, medium and large on the Home Screen, and under or above the clock on the Lock Screen. The medium and large sizes have a heart to save the passage and an arrow to draw the next one.
The year: a dot for each day, the ones gone filled in, with the percentage and the days left.
Memento Mori: the days left to an age you choose, 80 unless you change it, from a birth date you enter in Settings. It stays on the phone and in your own iCloud.

Right now

A short list of feelings — angry, anxious, afraid, putting it off, worried what others think — each opening a passage that speaks to it. Behind it, the passages are sorted into 17 topics, and the ones you tick feed the widget and the passages you swipe to.

Any passage can be shared as an image, in 9:16 for Stories and Reels, 4:5, square or 16:9, drawn in your stone and painting with its Nº and a small Marble mark. It goes out through the iOS share sheet.

What it does not do

No account, no server, no analytics, no ads and no third-party code. The passages and paintings are inside the app, so it needs no connection. Your collection, saved passages and settings sync between your devices through your own iCloud, and stay on the phone if iCloud is off. The daily reminder is off until you turn it on.

Honest limits

Short widgets get short passages. The small and Lock Screen widgets only show a passage that fits whole; on a day with a long one they show a shorter passage by the same author.
The Lock Screen is one colour. iOS tints Lock Screen widgets itself, so the stone and the painting do not show there.
iOS decides when a widget redraws, so a change can take a moment to appear.
iPhone only, iOS 18 or later.