Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
Seneca believed that “philosophers don’t practice what they preach”
What counts, is one’s attitude toward wealth, which is the wise man’s servant and the fool’s master; he, like any good Stoic, could lose all he had without being a whit less happy.
Seneca may well be history’s most notable example of a man who failed to live up to his principles.
The stoics saw the world as a single great community in which all men are brothers, ruled by a supreme providence which could be spoken of as nature, destiny, or a personal god.
A stoic must live in conformity with nature’s laws and resign himself completely to whatever fate may send him.
Only by living thus, and not setting too high a value on things which can at any moment be taken away from him, can he discover true, unshakable peace and contentment.
Living in accordance with nature means training ourselves to do without all but the necessities (food, water, clothing and shelter) and developing the inborn gift of reason which marks us off as different from the animal world.
We are meant to perfect this divine rational element so that it may conquer pain, grief, avarice, and the fear of death.
There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so
Happiness is achieved through the ideal goal of arete in Greek and virtus in Latin.
This summum bonum, supreme ideal, is:
- Wisdom (moral insight)
- Courage
- Self-Control
- Justice (upright dealing)
The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.
Letter II
Nothing is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind.
Nothing hinders a cure so much as a frequent change in treatment.
Set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with a great writer.
If at any moment you find yourself wanting a change from a particular author, go back to ones you have read before.
After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly for the day.
Out of the many bits of reading lay hold of one.
Letter III
If you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you do yourself, you have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.
Think for a long time before you admit a given person to your friendship.
When you have done so, welcome him with heart and soul, and speak with him as you would yourself.
Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
A state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is spineless inertia.
?A state of mind that delights in all activity is the restless energy of a hunted mind.
A balanced combination of both attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take thing easily.
Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night.
Letter V
I view with pleasure and approval the way you keep on at your studies and sacrifice everything to your single minded efforts to make yourself every day a better man.
Let me give you one piece of advice though: refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement, by doing things which are calculated to give rise to comment on your appearance or way of living generally.
Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd.
The simple way of life need not be a crude one.
Seneca learned from Hecato that limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear.
‘Cease to hope and you will cease to fear’
Both belong to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking to the future.
Both are due to projecting our thoughts far ahead instead of adapting ourselves to the present.
Letter VI
I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed.
Such a person will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend of all.
Letter VII
Retire into yourself as much as you can.
Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
A single example of extravagance or greed does a lot of harm—an intimate who leads a pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby; a wealthy neighbor provokes cravings of greed; a companion with a malicious nature rubs off some of his rust on you.
Welcome those who you are capable of improving. Men learn as they teach.
If you learn for your own benefit you have no call to fear that your trouble may have been wasted.
Interesting thing to say in a correspondence:
“Let me share with you three fine quotations I have come across, each concerned with something like the same idea—one of them is by way of payment of the usual debt so far as this letter is concerned, and the other two you are to regard as advance on account.”
Letter VIII
If you pray a thing may
And it does come your way,
‘Tis a long way from being your own.
Gifts of chance are not to be regarded as possessions.
The boon that could be given could be withdrawn.
Letter IX
The difference between the Epicurean and our own school is this:
our wise man feels his troubles but overcomes them, while their wise man does not even feel them.
Hecato: “I shall show you a love philtre compounded. It is this: if you wish to be loved, love.”
Friendship is not for the purpose of having someone come and sit beside your bed when you are ill or come to your rescue when thrown into chains, but instead so that on the contrary you may have someone by whose sickbed you may sit or whom he may release when that person is held prisoner by hostile hands.
Anyone thinking of his own interests and seeking out friendship is making a grave mistake.
The ending inevitably matches the beginning.
He that is friends with you for your usefulness will cultivate you only for so long as you are useful.
?The wise man lacks nothing but needs a great many things.
The fool needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.
Any man who does not think that what he has is more than ample is an unhappy man.
Letter XI
We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.
Letter XV
The mind has to be given some time off, but in such a way that it may be refreshed, not relaxed till it goes to pieces.
Letter XVI
It is the pursuit of wisdom that makes a happy life.
Natural desires are limited; those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for falsity has no point of termination.
Letter LXXVII
Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one.
Letter LXXXIII
Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behavior.
Drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity. Imagine the drunken man’s behavior extended over several days: would you hesitate to think him out of his mind?
So-called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
Letter LXXXVIII
Interesting: some people don’t learn what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need.
Lettee XCI
Misfortune has a way of choosing some unprecedented means or other of impressing its power on those who might be said to have forgotten it.
The growth of things is a tardy process and their undoing is a rapid matter.
You must need experience pain and hunger and thirst, and be ill, and suffer loss, and finally perish, but there’s nothing in all this that’s evil, insupportable or even hard.
Letter CIV
If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
Letter CVII
For Fate the willing leads, the unwilling drags along.
Letter CXIV
In the same way as extravagance in dress and entertaining are indications of a diseased community, so an aberrant literary style shows that the spirit has also come to grief.
Letter CXXII
Let us expand our life: action is its theme and duty.
Letter CXXIII
It is in no man’s, not even the rich 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.
And a stomach firmly under control, one that will put up with hunger, marks a considerable step towards independence.