Seneca,
Letters from a Stoic
These are excerpts from various letters by Seneca.
Quoting Pomponius, "Some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects
in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them."
"...scorn the pleasure that comes from the majority's approval. The many
speak highly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with
yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand? Your merits should
not be outward facing."
"Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me;
both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through
looking into the future... Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing
humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. Wild animals run from
the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more.
We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number
of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while
foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the
present."
"Every day should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear,
the one that rounds out and completes our lives. ...If God adds the morrow
we should accept it joyfully. The man who looks for the morrow without worrying
over it knows a peaceful independence, and a happiness beyond all others.
Whoever has said 'I have lived' receives a windfall every day he gets up
in the morning."
"Give up pointless, empty journeys, and whenever you want to know whether
the desire aroused in you by something you are pursuing is natural or quite
unseeing, ask yourself whether it is capable of coming to rest at any point;
if after going a long way there is always something remaining farther away,
be sure it is not something natural."
"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."
"It is one thing, however, to remember, another to know. To remember is to
safeguard something entrusted to your memory, whereas to know, by contrast,
is actually to make each item your own, and not to be dependent on some original
and be constantly looking to see what the master said."
Excerpt from Letter LIV: Seneca is discussing his recent illness (asthma):
"'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 of any distress then. 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? ... I shall not be afraid
when the last hour comes--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.
For where's the virtue in going out when you're really being thrown out?
And yet there is this virtue about my case: I'm in the process of being thrown
out, certainly, but the manner of it is as if I were going out. And the reason
why it never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion
from a place one is reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise
man does reluctantly. He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity
is going to force on him."
"We should cherish old age and enjoy it. It is full of pleasure if you know
how to use it. Fruit tastes most delicious just when its season is ending.
The charms of youth are at their greatest at the time of its passing. It
is the final glass which pleases the inveterate drinker, the one that sets
the crowning touch on his intoxication and sends him off into oblivion. Every
pleasure defers till its last its greatest delights."
"Life itself is slavery if the courage to die be absent."
"As it is with a play, so it is with life--what matters is not how long the
acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop.
Stop wherever you will--only make sure that you round it off with a good
ending."