Seneca's Letters from a Stoic

by Seneca

if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.

Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

Lay hold of to-day's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.

For love of bustle is not industry, – it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.

Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.

Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes;

Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all.

Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not. So look forward to better things.

philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; it exacts of every man that he should live according to his own standards, that his life should not be out of harmony with his words,

This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, – that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions, and always the same.

I do not say that the philosopher can always keep the same pace. But he can always travel the same path.

Do you ask what is the foundation of a sound mind? It is, not to find joy in useless things.

We have reached the heights if we know what it is that we find joy in and if we have not placed our happiness in the control of externals.

cast aside and trample under foot all the things that glitter outwardly and are held out to you by another or as obtainable from another; look toward the true good, and rejoice only in that which comes from your own store.

We must make it our aim already to have lived long enough. No one deems that he has done so, if he is just on the point of planning his life.

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

What, have you only at this moment learned that death is hanging over your head, at this moment exile, at this moment grief? You were born to these perils. Let us think of everything that can happen as something which will happen.

we do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we die every day.

the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process.

Not single is the death which comes; the death Which takes us off is but the last of all.

solitude prompts us to all kinds of evil.

everyone is better off in the company of somebody or other,

What you have done in the past will be manifest only at the time when you draw your last breath.

He who does not wish to die cannot have wished to live. For life is granted to us with the reservation that we shall die; to this end our path leads.

In the case of many men, their vices, being powerless, escape notice;

In the case of many men, their cruelty, ambition, and indulgence only lack the favour of Fortune to make them dare crimes that would match the worst. That their wishes are the same you will in a moment discover, in this way: give them the power equal to their wishes.

Learning virtue means unlearning vice.

That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.

I should prefer you to abandon grief, rather than have grief abandon you;

when the outcome of any undertaking is unsure, you must try again and again, in order to succeed ultimately.

There is not a man who, when he has benefited his neighbour, has not benefited himself,

what is more wretched than a man who forgets his benefits and clings to his injuries?

Evil men have but one pleasure in benefits, and a very short-lived pleasure at that; it lasts only while they are receiving them. But the wise man derives therefrom an abiding and eternal joy. For he takes delight not so much in receiving the gift as in having received it; and this joy never perishes; it abides with him always. He despises the wrongs done him; he forgets them, not accidentally, but voluntarily. 25. He does not put a wrong construction upon everything, or seek for someone whom he may hold responsible for each happening; he rather ascribes even the sins of men to chance. He will not misinterpret a word or a look; he makes light of all mishaps by interpreting them in a generous way. He does not remember an injury rather than a service. As far as possible, he lets his memory rest upon the earlier and the better deed, never changing his attitude towards those who have deserved well of him, except in climes where the bad deeds far outdistance the good, and the space between them is obvious even to one who closes his eyes to it; even then only to this extent, that he strives, after receiving the preponderant injury, to resume the attitude which he held before he received the benefit. For when the injury merely equals the benefit, a certain amount of kindly feeling is left over.

GRACE

Drunkenness does not create vice, it merely brings it into view;

We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one's reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen.