Seneca
Dialogues and Letters
Selected quotation from "Consolation to Helvia":
"No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived
by her favours. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own for ever,
who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when
the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant
of every stable pleasure. But the man who is not puffed up in good times
does not collapse either when they change. His fortitude is already tested
and he maintains a mind unconquered in the face of either condition: for
in the midst of prosperity he has tried his own strength against
adversity."
Selected quotations from "On Tranquillity of Mind":
" If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you
will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither
a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become
your friends and the finest people will flock about you. For even obscure
virtue is never concealed but gives visible evidence of herself: anyone worthy
of her will follow her tracks."
"Nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing
it is to have hearts that are ready and willing to receive all your secrets
in safety, with whom you are less afraid to share knowledge of something
than keep it to yourself, whose conversation soothes your distress, whose
advice helps you make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow,
whose very appearance cheers you up!"
"In any situation in life you will find delights and relaxations and pleasures
if you are prepared to make light of your troubles and not let them distress
you."
"Occasionally we should come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink
but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs
the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain
diseases."
Selected quotation from "On the Shortness of Life":
"You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs
to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it
as though you had a full and overflowing supply--though all the while that
very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last.
You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that
you desire. You will hear many people saying: 'When I am fifty I shall retire
into leisure; when I am sixty I shall give up public duties.' And what guarantee
do you have of a longer life? Who will allow your course to proceed as you
arrange it? Aren't you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of
your life, and to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on
any business? How late it is to begin really to live just when life must
end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our
fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few
have arrived!"
"Assuredly your lives, even if they last more than a thousand years, will
shrink into the tiniest span: those vices will swallow up any space of time.
The actual time you have--which reason can prolong though it naturally passes
quickly--inevitably escapes you rapidly: for you do not grasp it or hold
it back or try to delay that swiftest of all things, but you let it slip
away as though it were something superfluous and replaceable."
"Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future
and weariness of the present. But the man who spends all his time on his
own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs
for nor fears the next day. For what new pleasures can any hour now bring
him? He has tried everything, and enjoyed everything to repletion."
"You must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles:
he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that
a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left
harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle
by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long
tossing about."
"Nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing.
But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their
doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared
to spend their all to stay alive. So inconsistent are they in their feelings.
But if each of us could have the tally of his future years set before him,
as we can of our past years, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few
years ahead, and how carefully would they use them! And yet it is easy to
organize an amount, however small, which is assured; we have to be more careful
in preserving what will cease at an unknown point."
"No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life
will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check
its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but
glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king's command or a people's
favour. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing
or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while
life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making
yourself available for that.
Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who
boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in
order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their
lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting
things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it
comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle
to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are
arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours.
What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future
lies in uncertainty: live immediately. Listen to the cry of our greatest
poet, who as though inspired with divine utterance sings salutary verses:
Life's finest day for wretched
mortals here; Is always first to flee.
'Why do you linger?' he means. 'Why are you idle? If you don't grasp it first,
it flees.' And even if you do grasp it, it will still flee. So you must match
time's swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly
as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow. In chastising endless
delay, too, the poet very elegantly speaks not of the 'finest age' but 'finest
day'. However greedy you are, why are you so unconcerned and so sluggish
(while time flies so fast), extending months and years in a long sequence
ahead of you? The poet is telling you about the day--and about this very
day that is escaping. So can it be doubted that for wretched mortals--that
is, the preoccupied--the finest day is always the first to flee? Old age
overtakes them while they are still mentally childish, and they face it
unprepared and unarmed. For they have made no provision for it, stumbling
upon it suddenly and unawares, and without realizing that it was approaching
day by day. Just as travellers are beguiled by conversation or reading or
some profound meditation, and find they have arrived at their destination
before they knew they were approaching it; so it is with this unceasing and
extremely fast-moving journey of life, which waking or sleeping we make at
the same pace--the preoccupied become aware of it only when it is over."
"But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect
the present, and fear the future. When they come to the end of it, the poor
wretches realize too late that for all this time they have been preoccupied
in doing nothing."
Selected quotation from Letter #79:
"Pretence achieves nothing: A mask that is easily slipped on doesn't fool
many people: truth is the same through and through. Things that deceive have
no substance. Falsehood is a flimsy thing, and if you look hard, you can
see through it."