Letters from a Stoic

by Seneca

Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve.

And mark how self-sufficient he is; for on occasion he can be content with a part of himself. If he lose a hand through disease or war, or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes, he will be satisfied with what is left, taking as much pleasure in his impaired and maimed body as he took when it was sound. But while he does not pine for these parts if they are missing, he prefers not to lose them.

When a man has said: "I have lived!", every morning he arises he receives a bonus.

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

But life is not worth living, and there is no limit to our sorrows, if we indulge our fears to the greatest possible extent;