Key ideas: Seneca was a Stoic and a major philosophical figure of the Roman Empire. Born in 4 BC, Seneca committed suicide at 65 after receiving the order from Nero. Epistles are three books of letters from Seneca to Lucilius, a Roman knight.
NOTES
Book 1
ON SAVING TIME
Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose...
For we are mistaken when we look forward to death the major portion of death has already passcd. Whatever years lie behind us are in death's hand.
ON DISCURSIVENESS IN READIN
The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company...
Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You mast linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.
ON CROWDS
But nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for then it is that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue What do you think I mean?
I mean of pleasure that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman, because I have been among human beings...
it is too easy to side with the majority.
you should not copy the bad simply because they are many, nor should you hate the many because they are unlike you. Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve.
Democritus says "One man means as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man."
ON GROUNDLESS FEARS
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us we suffer more often in imagination than in reality...
"The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live." [Epicurus]
Reflect, my esteemed Lucilius, what this saying means, and you will see how revolting is the fickleness of men who lay down every day new foundations of life, and begin to build up fresh hopes even at the brink of the grave.
ON PHILOSOPHY, THE GUIDE OF LIFE
This also is a saying of Epicurus: " If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich."
Natural desires are limited but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.
SOUND MIND
No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me even though sound minds were for sale, they would not tind buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.
ON THE FUTILITY OF LEARNING MAXIMS
We Stoics are not subjects of a despot each of us lays claim to his own freedom.
[G]ive over hoping that you can skiin, by means of epitomes, the wisdom of distinguished men. Look into their wisdom as a whole study it as a whole. They are working out a plan and weaving together, line upon line, a masterpiece, from which nothing can be taken away without injury to the whole...
For this reason I hold that there is nothing of eminence in all such men as these, who never create anything themselves, but always lurk in the shadow of others, playing the role of interpreters, never daring to put once into practice what they have been so long in learning. They have exercised their memories on other men's
material. But it is one thing to remember, another to know.
Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory knowing, however, means making everything your own not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master.
Let there be a difference between yourself and your book!
ON QUIBBLING AS UNWORTHY OF THE PHILOSOPHER
"Mouse' is a syllable. Now a mouse eats cheese; therefore, a syllable eats cheese."
Suppose now that I cannot solve this problem see what peril hangs over my head as a result of such ignorance...
Unless, perhaps, the following syllogism is shrewder still: "Mouse is a syllable. Now a syllable does not eat cheese. Therefore a mouse does not eat cheese." What childish nonsense!
ON VATIAS VILLA
Nature gave us legs with which to do our own walking, and eyes with which to do our own seeing. Our luxuries nave condemned us to weakness.
Book 2
ON BUSINESS AS THE ENEMY OF PHILOSOPHY
The difference, I say, between a man of perfect wisdom and another who is progressing in wisdom is the same as the difference between a healthy man and one who is convalescing from a severe and lingering illness, for whom "health" means only a lighter attack of his disease.
If the latter does not take heed, there is an immediate relapse and a return to the same old trouble but the wise man cannot slip back, or slip into any more illness at all.
For health of body is a temporary matter which the physician cannot guarantee, even though he has restored it ; nay, he is often roused from his bed to visit the same patient who summoned him before.
The mind, however, once healed, is healed for good and all.
ON VIRTUE AS A REFUGE FROM WORLDLY DISTRACTIONS
The most sensible man, therefore, as soon as he sees the dole being brought in (*), runs from the theatre for he knows that one pays a high price for small favours.
No one will grapple with him on the way out, or strike him as he departs the quarrelling takes place where the prizes are.
(*) A distribution of coins, etc., at the public games. Food was also doled out to the populace on similar occasions.
ON LEARNING WISDOM IN OLD AGE
You should keep learning as long as you are ignorant, even to the end of your life, if there is anything in the proverb. And the proverb suits the present case as well as any "As long as you live, keep learning how to live."
None of those who have been raised to a loftier height by riches and honours is really great. Why then does he seem great to you?
It is because you are measuring the pedestal along with the man.
A dwarf is not tall, though he stand upon a mountain-top; a colossal statue will still be tall, though you place it in a well.
This is the error under which we labour; this is the reason why we are imposed upon; we value no man at what he is, but add to the man himself the trappings in wliich he is clothed.
But when you wish to inquire into a man's true worth, and to know what manner of man he is, look at him when he is naked; make him lay aside his inherited estate, his titles, and the other deceptions of fortune, let him even strip off his body. Consider his soul, its quality and its stature, and thus learn whether its greatness is borrowed, or its own.
ON WORLDLY DECEPTIONS
How many men, I say to myself, train their bodies, and how few train their minds!
How feather-brained are the athletes whose muscles and shoulders we admire.
The question which I ponder most of all is this if the body can be trained to such a degree of endurance that it will stand the blows and kicks of several opponents at once, and to such a degree that a man can last out the day and resist the scorching sun in the midst of the burning dust, drenched all the while with his own blood,—if this can be done, how much more easily might the mind be toughened so that it could receive the blows of Fortune and not be conquered, so that it might struggle to its feet again after it has been laid low, after it has been trampled under foot?
For although the body needs many things in order to be strong, yet the mind grows from within, giving to itself nourishment and exercise...
Liberty cannot be bought. It is therefore useless to enter in your ledger the item of " Freedom," for freedom is possessed neither by those who have bought it nor by those who have sold it. You must give this good to yourself, and seek it from yourself.
ON LIBERAL AND VOCATIONAL STUDIES
[Due to the length of the excerpt, I created a separate file for it:]
ON LIBERAL AND VOCATIONAL STUDIES
THE DISTINCION BETWEEN WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY
I shall draw the distinction between wisdom and philosophy.
Wisdom is the perfect good of the human mind;
Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and the endeavour to attain it.
Book 3
ON FACING HARDSHIPS
Spite of all do you still chafe and complain, not understanding that, in all the evils to which you the fact that you do refer, there is really only one chafe and complain...
I am ill but that is a part of my lot. My slaves have fallen sick, my income has gone off, my house is rickety, I have been assailed by losses, accidents, Nay, that this is a common thing. toil, and fear was an understatement; it was an inevitable thing. Such affairs come by order, and not by accident.
If you will believe me, it is my inmost emotions that I am just now disclosing to you: when everything seems to go hard and uphill, I have trained myself not merely to obey God, but to agree with His decisions. I follow Him because my soul wills it, and not because I must. Nothing will ever happen to me that I shall receive with ill humour or with a wry face. I shall pay up all my taxes willingly.
Now all the things which cause us to groan or recoil, are part of the tax of life things, my dear Lucilius, which you should never hope and never seek to escape.
ON THE DEGENERACY OF THE AGE
You are mistaken, my dear Lucilius, if you think that luxury, neglect of good manners, and other vices of which each man accuses the age in which he lives, are especially characteristic of our own epoch; no, they are the vices of mankind and not of the times. No era in history has ever been free from blame.
ON THE FUTILITY OF PLANNING AHEAD
The greatest flaw in life is that it is always imperfect, and that a certain part of it is postponed...
Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
He who has thus prepared himself, he whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind; but those who live for hope alone find that the immediate future always slips from their grasp and that greed steals along in its place, and the fear of death, a curse which lays a curse upon everything else.
ON THE SUPERFICIAL BLESSINGS
I wish, my dear Lucilius, that you would not be too particular with regard to words and their arrange-ment; I have greater matters than these to commend to your care.
You should seek what to write, rather than how to write it and even that not for the purpose of writing but of feeling it, that you may thus make what you have felt more your own and, as it were, set a seal on it.