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

by Seneca

What, then, is good? Knowledge of the facts. What is bad? Ignorance of the facts.

Deliver yourself to philosophy if you wish to be safe, to be tranquil, to be happy, and, what matters most, if you wish to be free. There is no other way you can gain your freedom.

What fortune did not grant, fortune does not take away.

For when I had friends, I had them as one who would lose them; now that I have lost them, I am as one who still has them.