Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Seneca

The Stoics divided logic into dialectic (short argument) and rhetoric (continuous exposition).

The work that I am doing is for posterity: it is they who can benefit from what I write. I am committing to the page some healthful admonitions, like the recipes for useful salves. I have found these effective on my own sores, which, even if not completely healed, have ceased to spread. The right path, that I myself discovered late in life when weary from wandering, I now point out to others.

Mere familiarity with texts will not do: there must be an increased capacity to make well-reasoned judgments.

In my view, the first sign of a settled mind is that it can stay in one place and spend time with itself.

One who is everywhere is nowhere.

Obtain each day some aid against poverty, something against death, and likewise against other calamities.

Indeed, it is not poverty if it is cheerful: the pauper is not the person who has too little but the one who desires more.

Live in such a way that anything you would admit to yourself could be admitted even to an enemy.

Persevere in what you have begun; hurry as much as you can, so that you will have more time to enjoy a mind that is settled and made flawless.

Children are terrified of trivial things, infants of imagined things, and we of both.

You are hard at work, forgetting everything else and sticking to the single task of making yourself a better person every day.

Otherwise we frighten off the very people we want to correct: by making them afraid that they will have to imitate everything about us, we make them unwilling to imitate us in any way at all.

“Avoid those things that please the many, the gifts that fortune brings. Be suspicious; be timid; resist every good that comes by chance.

Whether that house is built of sod or of variegated marble from foreign lands is of no significance: believe me, a person can be sheltered just as well with thatch as with gold. Scorn all those things that superfluous labor sets up for decoration and for show: keep in mind that nothing but the mind is marvelous, that to the great mind, nothing else is great.”

Believe me: those who appear to be doing nothing are doing greater things—they are dealing with matters both human and divine.

You should become a slave to philosophy, that you may attain true liberty.*

Anyone who does not think that what he has is plenty, is miserable, even if he is ruler of the entire world.*

If you think your circumstances are bad, then does it matter what they are really like?

It is not what he says that counts, but what he thinks—and not what he thinks on any one day, either, but what he thinks over time.

Only the wise man is satisfied with what he has: all the foolish are disgusted with themselves, and suffer accordingly.

There is not one of the senseless* who ought to be left alone. It is then that they set bad plans in motion; then, that they plot future perils for others or for themselves; then, that they marshal shameless desires. It is then that the mind brings out what it had concealed through fear or shame; then, that it heightens its daring, stimulates its lust, gives spur to its wrathfulness. The only advantage of solitude is that one is not confiding in anyone, there is no fear of informers. But the foolish person loses this advantage, for he betrays himself.

Consider whether the following may not be a healthful bit of advice: live with humans as if God may be watching; speak with God as if humans may be listening.

If God gives us a tomorrow, let us be glad to receive it. The happiest person, the most untroubled possessor of himself, is the one who awaits the morrow without anxiety. Anyone who has said, “I have done living” rises profitably each morning, having gained one day.

If a person is naked, the robber passes him by; the poor have peace, even where there is an ambush on the road.

It is more work to follow through on honorable aims than it is to conceive of them. One must persevere and add strength by constant study, until excellent intentions become excellence of mind.

Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak. Its demands are these: each person should live to the standard he himself has set; his manner of living should not be at odds either with itself or with his way of speaking; and all his actions should have a single tenor.

It is a great thing not to be corrupted by living amid riches; great is the man who is a pauper in his wealth.

No one is born rich: everyone who comes forth into the light is ordered to be content with milk and a bit of cloth. From such beginnings do we come, and yet now whole kingdoms are not big enough for us!

Thus I am unafraid as I prepare myself for that day when the artifices and disguises will be stripped away and I shall make judgment of myself. Is it just brave talk, or do I mean what I say? Were they for real, those defiant words I spoke against fortune, or were they just theater—just acting a part?

Bear in mind that in the days when the gods were well disposed, their images were of clay.*

And death, which we fear so deeply and refuse to meet, interrupts life, but does not abscond with it: the day will come again that will return us to the light. It is a day which many would refuse, except that we forget everything before returning.*

Neither young children nor those of wandering mind fear death; their state confers tranquility. It is most disgraceful if wisdom cannot do for us what foolishness does for them.

You must die on your feet, unconquered. What is the use of winning yourself a few extra days or years? Once born, we have no possibility of reprieve.*

Sometimes we make the best of fortune, but just as often fortune gets the better of us. It is shameful to drift rather than to go forward; shameful to find oneself in the midst of a whirlwind of events and ask, astonished, “How did I get here?”

Greatness of spirit despises great wealth; it prefers moderate means to abundance. For moderation is useful and life-giving, while abundance harms a person through excess.

So if you see a person undismayed by peril and untouched by desire, one cheerful in adversity and calm in the face of storms, someone who rises above all humankind and meets the gods at their own level, will you not be overcome with reverence before him?

A good conscience welcomes a crowd; a bad one is racked with anxiety even in solitude. If your actions are honorable, let everyone know them; if shameful, what does it matter that nobody knows? You know. Alas for you, if you have no concern for that witness!

We embrace bad things rather than good; we choose one thing and then the opposite; our aims and intentions are all in conflict with one another.

And no one can have a happy life if he looks only to himself, turning everything to his own advantage. If you want to live for yourself, you must live for another. 3 This sense of companionship links all human beings to one another; it holds that there is a common law of humankind; and if carefully and reverently preserved, it contributes greatly also to the maintenance of that other companionship I was speaking of, the one within a friendship. For he who has much in common with a fellow human will have everything in common with his friend.*

What other endeavor do you have than to make yourself a better person each day—to lay aside some error, to come to understand that what you think are flaws in your situation are in fact flaws in yourself?

(I myself have a great aversion to these persons kept for show. If I ever want to be amused by a fool, I do not have to look far—I laugh at myself.)

Choose as your helper someone you admire more when you see him than when you listen to him.

For the wise, a lifetime is as spacious as all of time is for God.*

The sage does nothing unwillingly: he escapes necessity in that he wishes to do what necessity will in any case require.