Letters from a Stoic

by Seneca

We should be practising with a dummy target, getting to be at home with poverty so that fortune cannot catch us unprepared.

We shall be easier in our minds when rich if we have come to realize how far from burdensome it is to be poor.

For no one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches. I am not, mind you, against your possessing them, but I want to ensure that you possess them without tremors; and this you will only achieve in one way, by convincing yourself that you can live a happy life even without them, and by always regarding them as being on the point of vanishing.

Moving to one’s end through nature’s own gentle process of dissolution – is there a better way of leaving life than that? Not because there is anything wrong with a sudden, violent departure, but because this gradual withdrawal is an easy route.

No count is taken of years. Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.

– ‘It is a very good thing to familiarize oneself with death.’ You may possibly think it unnecessary to learn something which you will only have to put into practice once. That is the very reason why we ought to be practising it. We must needs continually study a thing if we are not in a position to test whether we know it. ‘Rehearse death.’

A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are prisons, warders, bars to him? He has an open door.

There is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is...

‘How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.’ How can novelty of surroundings abroad and becoming acquainted with foreign scenes or cities be of any help? All that dashing about turns out to be quite futile. And if you want to know why all this running away cannot help you, the answer is simply this: you are running away in your own company. You have to lay aside the load on your spirit. Until you do that, nowhere will satisfy you. Imagine your present state as being like that of the prophetess whom our Virgil represents in a roused and excited state, largely taken over by a spirit not her own:

Traveling

Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.

‘I wasn’t born for one particular corner: the whole world’s my home country.’

‘A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation.’

a woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.

Yes indeed, I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up.

Philosophy is good advice, and no one gives advice at the top of his voice.

If pictures of absent friends are a source of pleasure to us, refreshing the memory and relieving the sense of void with a solace however insubstantial and unreal, how much more so are letters, which carry marks and signs of the absent friend that are real. For the handwriting of a friend affords us what is so delightful about seeing him again, the sense of recognition.

Yet I am just as much against his words coming in a trickle as in a stream. He should not keep people’s ears on the stretch any more than he should swamp them.

Nonetheless what is waited for does sink in more readily than what goes flying past; one speaks in any event of instruction as being handed on to those being taught, and something that escapes them is hardly being handed on.

What view is one likely to take of the state of a person’s mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no restraint?

A way of speaking which is restrained, not bold, suits a wise man in the same way as an unassuming sort of walk does. The upshot, then, of what I have to say is this: I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.

SPEAK SLOWLY

It was so enjoyable, though, that I found myself held and drawn on until I ended up having read it right through to the end without a break. All the time the sunshine was inviting me out, hunger prompting me to eat, the weather threatening to break, but I gulped it all down in one sitting.

when all reason for it is removed, we still find habit a reason for telling lies!

I’M glad to hear, from these people who’ve been visiting you, that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. It is just what one expects of an enlightened, cultivated person like yourself. ‘They’re slaves,’ people say. No. They’re human beings. ‘They’re slaves.’ But they share the same roof as ourselves. ‘They’re slaves.’ No, they’re friends, humble friends. ‘They’re slaves.’ Strictly speaking they’re our fellow-slaves, if you once reflect that fortune has as much power over us as over them.

propose to value them according to their character, not their jobs. Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job.

A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool;

similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his social position, which after all is only something that we wear like clothing.

You should live for the other person if you wish to live for yourself.

But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You’re worthy of her, she’s worthy of you – fall into each other’s arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation. There’s no excuse for your pursuing philosophy merely in moments when occasion allows. If you were sick you would take a rest from attending to your personal affairs and drop your practice in the courts.

Even as I fought for breath, though, I never ceased to find comfort in cheerful and courageous reflections. ‘What’s this?’ I said. ‘So death is having all these tries at me, is he? Let him, then! I had a try at him a long while ago myself.’ ‘When was this?’ you’ll say. Before I was born. Death is just not being. What that is like I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me. If there is any torment in the later state, there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day; yet we never felt conscious

I ask you, wouldn’t you say that anyone who took the view that a lamp was worse off when it was put out than it was before it was lit was an utter idiot? We, too, are lit and put out. We suffer somewhat in the intervening period, but at either end of it there is a deep tranquillity. For, unless I’m mistaken, we are wrong, my dear Lucilius, in holding that death follows after, when in fact it precedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that was before us. What does it matter, after all, whether you cease to be or never begin, when the result of either is that you do not exist?

Death and why it doesnt matter

I’m already prepared, not planning as much as a day ahead.

The man, though, whom you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die.

I’VE just this moment returned from a ride in my sedanchair, feeling as tired as if I’d walked the whole distance instead of being seated all the way. Even to be carried for any length of time is hard work, and all the more so, I dare say, because it is unnatural, nature having given us legs with which to do our own walking, just as she gave us eyes with which to do our own seeing. Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we’ve long been grudging about doing.

I CANNOT for the life of me see that quiet is as necessary to a person who has shut himself away to do some studying as it is usually thought to be.

The fact that the body is lying down is no reason for supposing that the mind is at peace. Rest is sometimes far from restful. Hence our need to be stimulated into general activity and kept occupied and busy with pursuits of the right nature whenever we are victims of the sort of idleness that wearies of itself.

‘Thinking of friends who are alive and well is like feasting on cakes and honey. Recalling those who are gone is pleasant but not without a touch of sourness.

Personally I do not agree with him there. Thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet and mellow. For when I had them with me it was with the feeling that I was going to lose them, and now that I have lost them I keep the feeling that I have them with me still.

Let us therefore go all out to make the most of friends, since no one can tell how long we shall have the opportunity.

It is better to make good the loss of a friend than to cry over him.

What I am about to go on to say is, I know, a commonplace, but I am not going to omit it merely because every one has said it. Even a person who has not deliberately put an end to his grief finds an end to it in the passing of time.

What I should have said before was, ‘My friend Serenus is younger than I am, but what difference does that make? He should die later than me, but it is quite possible he will die before me.’ It was just because I did not do so that fortune caught me unprepared with that sudden blow.

it in mind not only that all things are liable to death but that that liability is governed by no set rules. Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

I supposed not to inquire into this sort of thing? Am I not to know where I am descended from, whether I am to see this world only once or be born into it again time after time, what my destination is to be after my stay here, what abode will await my soul on its release from the terms of its serfdom on earth? Are you forbidding me to associate with heaven, in other words ordering me to go through life with my eyes bent on the ground?

I am too great, was born to too great a destiny to be my body’s slave. So far as I am concerned that body is nothing more or less than a fetter on my freedom. I place it squarely in the path of fortune, letting her expend her onslaught on it, not allowing any blow to get through it to my actual self. For that body is all that is vulnerable about me: within this dwelling so liable to injury there lives a spirit that is free. Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never shall it drive me to any pretence unworthy of a good man; never shall I tell a lie out of consideration for this petty body.

I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.

Death

This was how he began: ‘My dear Marcellinus,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t let this worry you as if you were having to make a great decision. There’s nothing so very great about living – all your slaves and all the animals do it. What is, however, a great thing is to die in a manner which is honourable, enlightened and courageous.

Wouldn’t you think a man a prize fool if he burst into tears because he didn’t live a thousand years ago? A man is as much a fool for shedding tears because he isn’t going to be alive a thousand years from now. There’s no difference between the one and the other – you didn’t exist and you won’t exist – you’ve no concern with either period.

Existance

Every journey has its end.

(for life itself is slavery if the courage to die be absent).

‘So,’ replied Caligula, ‘you are alive, then, as you are?’ That is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release. ‘You are scared of dying? So you are alive, then, as you are?’