Seneca: Letters from a Stoic (and Biography) [Annotated]

neither. It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one. Yet

Do you ask me what you should regard as especially to be avoided? I say, crowds; for as yet you cannot trust yourself to them with safety. I shall admit my own weakness, at any rate; for I never bring back home the same character that I took abroad with me.

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.

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; house yourself merely as a protection against personal discomfort.

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

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. Many of our blessings bring bane to us; for memory recalls the tortures of fear, while foresight anticipates them. The present alone can make no man wretched.

No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.

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.

One man means as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man."