Letters from a Stoic: An essential, best-loved classic (Collins Classics)

by Seneca

Stoicism was a belief that divine reason organised everything in the world in a perfect way. As an individual, this meant that one should act according to what is natural and virtuous, and that human happiness lies in accepting that mankind is part of a greater

It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one.

Our span of life is divided into parts; it consists of large circles enclosing smaller. One circle embraces and bounds the rest; it reaches from birth to the last day of existence. The next circle limits the period of our young manhood. The third confines all of childhood in its circumference. Again, there is, in a class by itself, the year; it contains within itself all the divisions of time by the multiplication of which we get the total of life.