“Assist yourself by a frequent perusal of the entertaining moralists: Have recourse to the learning of PLUTARCH, the imagination of LUCIAN, the eloquence of CICERO, the wit of SENECA, the gaiety of MONTAIGNE, the sublimity of SHAFTESBURY.
life’s ultimate end was living “according to nature”.
They believed that the best way to deal with set-backs and suffering is to prepare for them through practice and contemplation.
“Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything that is in her power.”
Page: 1 For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed.
Page: 1 Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Page: 2 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.
Page: 2 You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works,
Page: 2 if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.
Page: 2 Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
Page: 2 And in reading of many books is distraction.
Page: 2 So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before.
Page: 2 It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Page: 2 Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.
Page: 3 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.
Page: 3 you should share with a friend at least all your worries and reflections.
Page: 3 Some, for example, fearing to be deceived, have taught men to deceive; by their suspicions they have given their friend the right to do wrong.
Page: 4 No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss;
Page: 5 “Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth.” Do you know what limits that law of nature ordains for us? Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold. In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary for you to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud, or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates; nor is it necessary for you to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature’s needs are easily provided and ready to hand.
Page: 6 “Cease to hope,” he says, “and you will cease to fear.”
Page: 6 fear follows hope.
Page: 6 But the chief cause of both these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts a long way ahead.
Page: 6 Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.
Page: 7 But nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games;
Page: 7 I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman, because I have been among human beings.
Page: 8 bad example reacts on the agent?
Page: 8 Much harm is done by a single case of indulgence or greed;
Page: 8 there is not a man of them who can understand you. One or two individuals will perhaps come in your way, but even these will have to be moulded and trained by you so that they will understand you. You may say: “For what purpose did I learn all these things?” But you need not fear that you have wasted your efforts; it was for yourself that you learned them.
Page: 9 for we think that we hold them in our grasp, but they hold us in theirs.
Page: 9 that you indulge the body only so far as is needful for good health.
Page: 9 The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind.
Page: 9 Despise everything that useless toil creates as an ornament and an object of beauty.
Page: 10 “If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of Philosophy.”
Page: 11 our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them;
Page: 11 that the wise man is self-sufficient.
Page: 11 In this sense the wise man is self-sufficient, that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them.
Page: 11 ‘If you would be loved, love.‘”
Page: 11 Attalus used to say: “It is more pleasant to make than to keep a friend, as it is more pleasant to the artist to paint than to have finished painting.”
Page: 12 For want implies a necessity, and nothing is necessary to the wise man.
Page: 13 “My goods are all with me!”
Page: 13 Do you understand now how much easier it is to conquer a whole tribe than to conquer one man?
Page: 15 We can get rid of most sins, if we have a witness who stands near us when we are likely to go wrong.
Page: 16 Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains.
Page: 17 That man is happiest, and is secure in his own possession of himself, who can await the morrow without apprehension.
Page: 17 Any truth, I maintain, is my own property.
Page: 17 so that all persons who swear by the words of another, and put a value upon the speaker and not upon the thing spoken, may understand that the best ideas are common property.
Page: 18 There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Page: 18 What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes;
Page: 18 some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all.
Page: 18 Here is the rule for such matters: we are tormented either by things present, or by things to come, or by both.
Page: 18 For truth has its own definite boundaries, but that which arises from uncertainty is delivered over to guesswork and the irresponsible license of a frightened mind.
Page: 19 You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives; so look forward meanwhile to better things. 11. What shall you gain by doing this? Time.
Page: 19 But life is not worth living, and there is no limit to our sorrows, if we indulge our fears to the greatest possible extent; in this matter, let prudence help you, and contemn with a resolute spirit even when it is in plain sight.
Page: 19 If you cannot do this, counter one weakness with another, and temper your fear with hope.
Page: 20 “The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.”[3]
Page: 20 He will have many masters who makes his body his master, who is over-fearful in its behalf, who judges everything according to the body.
Page: 20 we fear want, we fear sickness, and we fear the troubles which result from the violence of the stronger.
Page: 21 So the wise man will never provoke the anger of those in power;
Page: 21 If you are empty-handed, the highwayman passes you by: even along an infested road, the poor may travel in peace.[3]
Page: 21 avoid three things with special care: hatred, jealousy, and scorn.
Page: 22 It is no business of yours; a tyrant is being selected. What does it concern you who conquers? The better man may win; but the winner is bound to be the worse man.”[6]
Page: 22 Sometimes a vessel perishes in harbour; but what do you think happens on the open sea?
Page: 22 “He who needs riches least, enjoys riches most.”[8]
Page: 22 While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it.
Page: 22 he ceases to be master and becomes a steward.
Page: 23 It is indeed foolish, my dear Lucilius, and very unsuitable for a cultivated man, to work hard over developing the muscles and broadening the shoulders and strengthening the lungs.
Page: 23 by overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render it less active.
Page: 23 These exercises are running, brandishing weights, and jumping, - high-jumping or broad-jumping,
Page: 24 “The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.”
Page: 24 nor do we reflect how pleasant it is to demand nothing, how noble it is to be contented and not to be dependent upon Fortune.
Page: 24 They look better to those who hope for them than to those who have attained them.
Page: 24 no man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom;
Page: 24 Philosophy
Page: 24 it sits at the helm and directs our course as we waver amid uncertainties.
Page: 25 that you should not allow the impulse of your spirit to weaken and grow cold. Hold fast to it and establish it firmly, in order that what is now impulse may become a habit of the mind.
Page: 25 “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.”
Page: 25 you will only learn from such things to crave still greater.
Page: 25 When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.
Page: 25 If you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to nature.
Page: 26 If you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man, or resemble a poor man.
Page: 27 “The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.”
Page: 27 It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress,
Page: 28 We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.
Page: 29 anger should be avoided, not merely that we may escape excess, but that we may have a healthy mind.
Page: 30 “You must reflect carefully beforehand with whom you are to eat and drink, rather than what you are to eat and drink. For a dinner of meats without the company of a friend is like the life of a lion or a wolf.”
Page: 31 A trifling debt makes a man your debtor; a large one makes him an enemy.
Page: 31 philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak;
Page: 31 “What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things.”[1]
Page: 33 Every man, when he first sees light, is commanded to be content with milk and rags. Such is our beginning, and yet kingdoms are all too small for us![4]
Page: 33 You see where the true happiness lies, but you have not the courage to attain it.
Page: 33 There is the same difference between these two lives as there is between mere brightness and real light; the latter has a definite source within itself, the other borrows its radiance; the one is called forth by an illumination coming from the outside, and anyone who stands between the source and the object immediately turns the latter into a dense shadow; but the other has a glow that comes from within.
Page: 34 “If you wish,” said he, “to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.”
Page: 35 The belly will not listen to advice; it makes demands, it importunes. And yet it is not a troublesome creditor; you can send it away at small cost, provided only that you give it what you owe, not merely all you are able to give.
Page: 36 there are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.
Page: 37 No one has anything finished, because we have kept putting off into the future all our undertakings.[5]
Page: 37 We have reached the heights if we know what it is that we find joy in and if we have not placed our happiness in the control of externals.
Page: 38 The yield of poor mines is on the surface; those are really rich whose veins lurk deep, and they will make more bountiful returns to him who delves unceasingly.
Page: 38 pleasure, unless it has been kept within bounds, tends to rush headlong into the abyss of sorrow.
Page: 38 There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose; the rest do not proceed; they are merely swept along,
Page: 38 “It is bothersome always to be beginning life.”
Page: 39 It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.
Page: 40 both hope for that which is utterly just, and prepare yourself against that which is utterly unjust.
Page: 41 now warn you not to drown your soul in these petty anxieties of yours; if you do, the soul will be dulled and will have too little vigour left when the time comes for it to arise.
Page: 41 It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out;
Page: 43 because solitude prompts us to all kinds of evil.
Page: 44 He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery; he is above any external power, or, at any rate, he is beyond it.
Page: 46 No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me, even though sound minds were for sale, they would not find buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.
Page: 46 “Real wealth is poverty adjusted to the law of Nature.”[5]
Page: 46 The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels.”
Page: 47 The person you are matters more than the place to which you go;
Page: 47 “I am not born for any one corner of the universe; this whole world is my country.”
Page: 47 He seldom comes to see me, for no other reason than that he is afraid to hear the truth,
Page: 48 The archer ought not to hit the mark only sometimes; he ought to miss it only sometimes.
Page: 48 That which takes effect by chance is not an art.
Page: 48 “I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know, they do not approve, and what they approve, I do not know.”[3]
Page: 49 if the whole state, even the women and children, sing your praises, how can I help pitying you? For I know what pathway leads to such popularity.