Letters from a Stoic

by Seneca

The poor lack much, the greedy everything. The greedy man does no one any good, But harms no person more than his own self.

He needs but little who desires but little.

He has his wish, whose wish can be To have what is enough.

This is why no wine ever finds its way into my stomach.

This is the reason for my life-long avoidance of hot baths, believing as I do that it is effeminate as well as pointless to stew one’s body and exhaust it with continual sweating. Some other things to which I once said good-bye have made their reappearance, but nevertheless, in these cases in which I have ceased to practise total abstinence, I succeed in observing a limit, which is something hardly more than a step removed from total abstinence (and even perhaps more difficult – with some things less effort of will is required to cut them out altogether than to have recourse to them in moderation).

You cannot accept that the soul which was once that of a man may sojourn in wild beasts, or in our own domestic animals, or in the creatures of the deep? You cannot accept that nothing ever perishes on this earth, instead merely undergoing a change in its whereabouts? And that the animal world, not just the heavenly bodies that revolve in their unalterable tracks, moves in cycles, with its souls propelled along an orbital path of their own?

For if these ideas are correct, to abstain from eating the flesh of animals will mean guiltlessness; and even if they are not, it will still mean frugal living. What do you lose by believing in it all? All I am depriving you of is what the lions and the vultures feed on.’

Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable.

Besides, there are no fixed rules of style. They are governed by the usage of society and usage never stands still for any length of time.

The queen unharmed, the bees all live at one; Once she is lost, the hive’s in anarchy.* The spirit is our queen. So long as she is unharmed, the rest remains at its post, obedient and submissive. If she wavers for a moment, in the same moment the rest all falters.†

shame on him who lies in bed dozing when the sun is high in the sky, whose waking hours commence in the middle of the day – and even this time, for a lot of people, is the equivalent of the small hours.

Don’t you think it’s living unnaturally to drink without having eaten, taking liquor into an empty system and going on to dinner in a drunken state?

swilling would be a better description of it – in naked groups the moment they’re inside the doors of the public bath-house, every now and then having a rub all over to get rid of the perspiration brought on by continually putting down the piping hot liquor. To them drinking after lunch or dinner is a common habit, something only done by rural worthies and people who don’t know where the true pleasure lies: the wine that gives a person undiluted enjoyment, they say, is the wine that makes its way into his system unobstructed instead of swimming about in his food; intoxication on an empty stomach is the kind that gratifies a man.

Having started to make a practice of desiring everything contrary to nature’s habit, they finally end up by breaking off relations with her altogether. ‘It’s daylight: time for bed! All’s quiet: now for our exercises, now for a drive, now for a meal! The daylight’s getting nearer: time we had our dinner! No need to do as the crowd does: to follow the common, well-worn path in life is a sordid way to behave. Let’s leave the daytime to the generality of people. Let’s have early hours that are exclusively our own’.

This sort of person is to me as good as dead. After all, how far can a person be from the grave, and an untimely one at that, if he lives by the light of tapers and torches?* I

Moreover the man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody’s lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about. So every now and then he does something calculated to set people talking. Plenty of people squander fortunes, plenty of people keep mistresses. To win any reputation in this sort of company you need to go in for something not just extravagant but really out of the ordinary. In a society as hectic as this one it takes more than common profligacy to get oneself talked about.

Popularity

It is in no man’s power to have whatever he wants; but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn’t got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way.

Stoicism in one quote

craftsmen. One is ashamed to be seen to have only the kind of baggage which can be jolted around without coming to any harm.

realize that there are two classes of things attracting or repelling us. We are attracted by wealth, pleasures, good looks, political advancement and various other welcoming and enticing prospects: we are repelled by exertion, death, pain, disgrace and limited means. It follows that we need to train ourselves not to crave for the former and not to be afraid of the latter.

Let us fight the battle the other way round – retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

The obstacle is the way

This sort of thing may be all right for the Greeks, but the kind of talk to which we would be better to turn our ears is this: ‘No man’s good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt. Pleasure is a poor and petty thing.

Death is not an evil. What is it then? The one law mankind has that is free of all discrimination. Superstition is an idiotic heresy: it fears those it should love: it dishonours those it worships.

Solace in life was what I commended to you’, he said. ‘But you prefer death and glory. I will not grudge your setting so fine an example. We can die with equal fortitude. But yours will be the nobler end.’