Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
And when you have progressed so far that you have also respect for yourself, you may send away your attendant; but until then, set as a guard over yourself the authority of some man, whether your choice be the great Cato or Scipio, or Laelius, – or any man in whose presence even abandoned wretches would check their bad impulses.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
are certain things which can be pointed out only by someone who is present. The physician cannot prescribe by letter the proper time for eating or bathing; he must feel the pulse.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
There is no reason why pride in advertising your abilities should lure you into publicity, so that you should desire to recite or harangue before the general public. Of course I should be willing for you to do so if you had a stock-in-trade that suited such a mob; as it is, there is not a man of them who can understand you. One or two individuals
... See moreLucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
it is more important for you to keep the resolutions you have already made than to go on and make noble ones.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. I am not speaking with you in the Stoic strain but in my milder style. For it is our Stoic fashion to speak of all those things, which provoke cries and groans, as unimportant and beneath notice; but you and I must
... See moreLucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
what would happen if we should begin to separate ourselves from the customs of our fellow-men? Inwardly, we ought to be different in all respects, but our exterior should conform to society. 3. Do not wear too fine, nor yet too frowzy, a toga. One needs no silver plate, encrusted and embossed in solid gold; but we should not believe the lack of
... See moreLucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
However, we shall consider later[7] whether the wise man ought to give his attention to politics; meanwhile, I beg you to consider those Stoics who, shut out from public life, have withdrawn into privacy for the purpose of improving men's existence and framing laws for the human race without incurring the displeasure of those in power. The wise man
... See moreLucius Annaeus Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium
But he also adds that one should attempt nothing except at the time when it can be attempted suitably and seasonably. Then, when the long-sought occasion comes, let him be up and doing.