Letters From a Stoic - Seneca: Summary of all 124 Letters
Reading refreshes the mind and prepares it to be nourished with new ideas and thoughts.
Refreshment is not obtained without study.
Sift whatever we have gathered from reading lots of books and advise our care towards it. Let go of your money, with is either a danger or burden to the possessor.
Again, it makes no difference how great the passion is; no matter what its size may be, it knows no obedience, and does not welcome advice.
The prudent individual is the one who is happy. This individual focuses on their future actions. This person is also self-restrained and practicing temperance. If a man has any passions, he will be carried off by them and his rational mind will be no match.
Vices are never genuinely tamed.
Whatever exists as something harmful does not keep itself within bounds. It expresses itself freely and widely. If a man has self-control and wisdom he can be at peace regarding the habits of the mind. Therefore, the wise man shall take up virtue, because that resultant pleasure from virtue makes a man happy. The happy man prefers no life to his.
Pain and poverty do not make a man worse. What makes him worse is when he cannot bear the consequences of it. No bad fortune or external event can shut the wise man away from action. Even when the wildest animal meets the wise man, he is tame.
O my country, make the most of the good that I have done, but without me. I have been the cause of your freedom, and I shall also be its proof; I go into exile, if it is true that I have grown beyond what is to your advantage! -Seneca on Scipio, a great military commander
Scipio, after leading Rome to freedom, designed his own path to exile from that very Rome which he set free.
What a collection of statues, nice buildings, and unnecessaries we construct solely to spend money. What have we become when everything is so luxurious that all we have to step upon is marble? What is the point of a bath overlooking a large estate of land and sunset, when men did not pursue such a state in the past? Seneca harps on the unneeded abundance of pleasure in modern society, and that all the joys you partake in today did not exist very recently ago.
Make the Thanksgiving prosperous with an improved soul, not a superficial bigger turkey nor grander meal.
He who blushes at riding in a rattle-trap will boast when he rides in style.
That which is good makes a man good. Events that occur by chance do not make a man good, and therefore these events are not good. The musician without music may still be an artist, but he is devoid of the ability to practice his art. The good of man is not this way, for we are tied to it. Good cannot be an art separated from man.