For just as there is for other things, dear Lucilius, so there is an ill-considered longing for death that frequently grips men who are noble and of an adventurous disposition, and frequently also those who are timid and shiftless. The first kind scorn life; the second kind are weighed down by it. 26 Others find that they have become satiated with

Maecenas—for he spoke truth even on the rack.* Lightens the peak itself on high. If you ask which of his books contains this saying, it is written in the one entitled Prometheus. What he’s trying to say is this: it is the high places that get struck by lightning. Tell me: would it be worth it to you to speak in such a garbled way, for any amount of

You should not consider where things come from but where they are headed.

His ambitions for his work are also evident in passages where the writing takes on a more elevated style. Paragraphs like 41.2–4, on the majesty of forests and the grandeur of the human mind, leave us in no doubt that Seneca meant his letters to be admired as fine writing. But the intervening passages of plain and sometimes breezy and colloquial st

finding prosperity in that which no one else can control.

I’m sure these do a great deal for beginners and for listeners from outside the school. For individual sayings take hold more easily when they are isolated and rounded off like bits of verse.

while the gentle flow of speech “sweeter than honey” belongs to the elder.*

But how are we to tear ourselves away from that folly? And when? No one is strong enough to swim on his own to safety: someone has to extend a hand; someone has to give a pull.

words work like seeds. Though tiny, they achieve much. Only, as I said, the mind that receives them has to be suited to them, and has to absorb them.