Selected quotes from "Seneca: Letters from a Stoic"
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Letter II: On discursiveness in reading.

* "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."

* "You must 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."

* "Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty,
 against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after
 you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested
 that day."

* "nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine"

* "it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read."

* "Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all."

* "Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first,
 to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough."



Letter VI: On sharing knowledge.

* "Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial,
 if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were
 given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden
 and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to
 possess, without friends to share it."



Letter VIII: On the philosopher's seclusion.

 * "I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that
   may be of assistance to them."

 * "The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be
   disobedient to the mind. Eat merely to relieve your hunger; drink
   merely to quench your thirst; dress merely to keep out the cold"

 * "understand that a man is sheltered just as well by a thatch as by
   a roof of gold."

 * "What Chance has made yours is not really"



Letter XV: On brawn and brains.

* "by overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render
 it less active."

* "we are plunged by our blind desires into ventures which will harm
 us, but certainly will never satisfy us; for if we could be satisfied
 with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago"

* "continually remind yourself, Lucilius, how many ambitions you have
 attained. When you see many ahead of you, think how many are behind!"

* "Fix a limit which you will not even desire to pass, should you have
 the power. At last, then, away with all these treacherous goods! They
 look better to those who hope for them than to those who have
 attained them."

* "why should I demand of Fortune that she give rather than demand
 of myself that I should not crave?"



Letter XVIII: On festivals and fasting.

* "It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob
 is drunk and vomiting; but it shows greater self-control to
 refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in
 a different way"

* "It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should
 toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress"

* "For though water, barley-meal, and crusts of barley-bread, are
 not a cheerful diet, yet it is the highest kind of Pleasure to
 be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food, and to have
 reduced one's needs to that modicum which no unfairness of Fortune
 can snatch"

* "Ungoverned anger begets madness"

* "it does not matter how great is the flame, but what it falls upon."



Letter XXVIII: On travel as a cure for discontent.

* "Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing
 that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you
 wandering is ever at your heels."

* "Live in this belief: 'I am not born for any one corner of the
 universe; this whole world is my country.'"

* "It helps little to have cast out your own faults if you must
 quarrel with those of others."



Letter XXXIII: On the futility of learning maxims.

* "Take command, and utter some word which posterity will remember."

* "the truth will never be discovered if we rest contented with
 discoveries already made."

* "he who follows another not only discovers nothing but is not even
 investigating."



Letter XXXVIII: On quiet conversation.

* "we do not need many words, but, rather, effective words."



Letter III: On true and false friendship.

* "But if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you
 trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently
 understand what true friendship means."

* "Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to
 your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome
 him with all your heart and soul."

* "Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal."

* "Why need I keep back any words in the presence of my friend?"

* "It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one. Yet
 the former fault is, I should say, the more ingenuous, the latter
 the more safe."



Letter XL: On the proper style for a philosopher's discourse.

* "the word which has been long awaited sinks in more easily than
 the word which flits past us on the wing."

* "speech that deals with the truth should be unadorned and plain."



Letter XLVII: On Master and Slave.

* "Despise, then, if you dare, those to whose estate you may at any
 time descend, even when you are despising them."

* "value them according to their character, and not according to
 their duties."

* "That which annoys us does not necessarily injure us; but we are
 driven into wild rage by our luxurious lives, so that whatever does
 not answer our whims arouses our anger."



Letter XLVIII: On quibbling as unworthy of the philosopher.

* "There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual;
 we live in common."



Letter LIV: On asthma and death.

* "Death is non-existence, and I know already what that means. What
 was before me will happen again after me. If there is any suffering
 in this state, there must have been such suffering also in the past,
 before we entered the light of day. As a matter of fact, however,
 we felt no discomfort then."

* "And I ask you, would you not say that one was the greatest of fools
 who believed that a lamp was worse off when it was extinguished than
 before it was lighted? We mortals also are lighted and extinguished;
 the period of suffering comes in between, but on either side there
 is a deep peace."



Letter LV: On Vatia's villa.

* "Our luxuries have condemned us to weakness; we have ceased to be
 able to do that which we have long declined to do."

* "a person is at leisure who has withdrawn from society, is free
 from care, self-sufficient, and lives for himself"

* "Does he who is a victim of anxiety know how to live for
 himself? Does he even know (and that is of first importance) how
 to live at all?"



Letter V: On the philosopher's mean.

* "Just as it is a sign of luxury to seek out dainties, so it is
 madness to avoid that which is customary and can be purchased at
 no great price."

* "we may perfectly well be plain and neat at the same time."

* "'Cease to hope,' he says, 'and you will cease to fear.'"

* "Beasts avoid the dangers which they see, and when they have escaped
 them are free from care; but we men torment ourselves over that
 which is to come as well as over that which is past."



Letter LXIII: On grief for lost friends.

* "Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them
 overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail."

* "Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost
 becomes a pleasant memory to us."

* "Whatever can happen at any time can happen to-day."



Letter LXV: On the first cause.

* "And what is death? It is either the end, or a process of change. I
 have no fear of ceasing to exist; it is the same as not having
 begun. Nor do I shrink from changing into another state, because
 I shall, under no conditions, be as cramped as I am now."



Letter LXXVII: On taking one's own life.

* "At whatever point you leave off living, provided you leave off
 nobly, your life is a whole."

* "No one is so ignorant as not to know that we must at some time
 die; nevertheless, when one draws near death, one turns to flight,
 trembles, and laments. Would you not think him an utter fool who
 wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago?"

* "There is no life that is not short."



Letter LXXVIII: On the healing power of the mind.

* "sometimes it is an act of bravery even to live."

* "whatever has uplifted the soul helps the body also."

* "Nothing, my excellent Lucilius, refreshes and aids a sick man so
 much as the affection of his friends"

* "There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the
 fear of death."

* "You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive;
 even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you"

* "Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to
 make pain either endurable or short."

* "The reason, however, why the inexperienced are impatient when
 their bodies suffer is, that they have not accustomed themselves
 to be contented in spirit."

* "there is no bitterness in doing without that which you have ceased
 to desire."

* "do not of your own accord make your troubles heavier to bear and
 burden yourself with complaining. Pain is slight if opinion has
 added nothing to it"

* "in thinking it slight, you will make it slight."

* "A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is."

* "What benefit is there in reviewing past sufferings, and in being
 unhappy, just because once you were unhappy?"

* "It is your body that is hampered by ill-health, and not your soul
 as well."

* "Whatever falls to one's lot after a period of abstinence is welcomed
 with greater zest."

* "That which has been long expected comes more gently."



Letter VII: On crowds.

* "To consort with the crowd is harmful; there is no person who does
 not make some vice attractive to us, or stamp it upon us, or taint
 us unconsciously therewith. Certainly, the greater the mob with
 which we mingle, the greater the danger."

* "I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more
 voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman, because I have been
 among human beings."

* "The young character, which cannot hold fast to righteousness, must
 be rescued from the mob; 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."

* "Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome
 those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for
 men learn while they teach."

* "they asked him what was the object of all this study applied to an
 art that would reach but very few. He replied: 'I am content with
 few, content with one, content with none at all.'"



Letter LXXXIII: On drunkenness.

* "I shall keep watching myself continually, and -- a most useful
 habit -- shall review each day."

* "more men abstain from forbidden actions because they are ashamed
 of sinning than because their inclinations are good."

* "what men call pleasures are punishments as soon as they have
 exceeded due bounds."

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