Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) | Stoicism

Letter 81 LXXXI. On Benefits 1. You complain that you have met with an ungrateful person. If this is your first experience of that sort, you should offer thanks either to your good luck or to your caution. In this case, however, caution can effect nothing but to make you ungenerous. For if you wish to avoid such a danger,

Letter 82 LXXXII. On the Natural Fear of Death 1. I have already ceased to be anxious about you. “Whom then of the gods,” you ask, “have you found as your voucher?" A god, let me tell you, who deceives no one, – a soul in love with that which is upright and good. The better part of yourself is

Letter 83 LXXXIII. On Drunkenness 1. You bid me give you an account of each separate day, and of the whole day too; so you must have a good opinion of me if you think that in these days of mine there is nothing to hide. At any rate, it is thus that we should live, – as if we

Letter 84 LXXXIV. On Gathering Ideas 1. The journeys to which you refer – journeys that shake the laziness out of my system – I hold to be profitable both for my health and for my studies. You see why they benefit my health: since my passion for literature makes me lazy and careless about my body, I can take

Letter 85 LXXXV. On Some Vain Syllogisms 1. I had been inclined to spare you, and had omitted any knotty problems that still remained undiscussed; I was satisfied to give you a sort of taste of the views held by the men of our school, who desire to prove that virtue is of itself sufficiently capable of rounding out the

Letter 86 LXXXVI. On Scipio’s Villa 1. I am resting at the country-house which once belonged to Scipio Africanus himself; and I write to you after doing reverence to his spirit and to an altar which I am inclined to think is the tomb of that great warrior. That his soul has indeed returned to the skies, whence it came,

Letter 87 LXXXVII. Some Arguments in Favour of the Simple Life 1. “I was shipwrecked before I got aboard.” I shall not add how that happened, lest you may reckon this also as another of the Stoic paradoxes; and yet I shall, whenever you are willing to listen, nay, even though you be unwilling, prove to you that these words

Letter 88 LXXXVIII. On Liberal and Vocational Studies 1 . You have been wishing to know my views with regard to liberal studies. My answer is this: I respect no study, and deem no study good, which results in money-making. Such studies are profit-bringing occupations, useful only in so far as they give the mind a preparation and do not

Letter 89 LXXXIX. On the Parts of Philosophy 1 . It is a useful fact that you wish to know, one which is essential to him who hastens after wisdom – namely, the parts of philosophy and the division of its huge bulk into separate members. For by studying the parts we can be brought more easily to understand the

Letter 90 XC. On the Part Played by Philosophy in the Progress of Man 1 . Who can doubt, my dear Lucilius, that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy? Hence the idea that our debt to philosophy is greater than our debt to the gods, in proportion as a

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