Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
31 quotes
"[I]ndulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather."
"To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy."
"you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings ofHecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That wasindeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind."
"Reflect that nothing merits admiration except thespirit, the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything."
"There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with"
"Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together."
"A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body."
"Words need to be sown like seeds. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when in lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size."
"Once you have rid yourself of the affliction there, though, every change of scene will become a pleasure. You may be banished to the ends of the earth, and yet in whatever outlandish corner of the world you may find yourself stationed, you will find that place, whatever it may be like, a hospitable home. Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there."
"The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing."
"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person."
"All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way."
"The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time."
"So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting. All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re travelling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way."
"If you look on wealth as a thing to be valued your imaginary poverty will cause you torment."
"There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
"However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him."
"For Fate/ The willing leads, the unwilling drags along."
"Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you, and make the most of them while they are at their best."
"[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives."
"The road is long if one proceeds by way of precepts but short and effectual if by way of personal example."
"The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth."
"A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it."
"Barley porridge, or a crust of barley bread, and water do not make a very cheerful diet, but nothing gives one keener pleasure than having the ability to derive pleasure even from that-- and the feeling of having arrived at something which one cannot be deprived of by any unjust stroke of fortune."
"To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand"