Thread by @andrewfrae

1/ A thread with my notes from ‘Seneca: Letters from a Stoic’

Background: Seneca (c.4 B.C. - A.D. 65) was a Roman advisor to Emperor Nero. These are a collection of letters written near the end of his life to his friend, Lucilius,

2/ It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the man who hankers after more.

3/ Live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.

4/ Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. The two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to.

Both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future.

5/ Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.

6/ Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving.

7/ The time of life that offers the greatest delight is the age that sees the downward movement; even the age that stands on the brink has pleasures of its own. How nice it is to have outworn one’s desires and left them behind!

8/ Death ought to be right there before the eyes of a young man just as much as an old one.

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10/ It’s only when you’re breathing your last that the way you’ve spent your time will become apparent.

11/ Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

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13/ Socrates: How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.

14/ I do no agree with those who recommend a stormy life and plunge straight into the breakers, waging a spirited struggle against worldly obstacles every day of their lives. The wise man will put up with these things, not go out of his way to meet them.

15/ It does not profit a man much to have managed to discard his own failings if he must ever be at loggerheads with other people’s.

16/ It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your memory, whereas to know, by contrast, is actually to make each item your own.

17/ Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. You would have to organise your life very economically to have enough for all the things that are necessary; isn't it the height of folly to learn inessential things when time is so desperately short.

18/ Why does no one admit his failings? Because he’s still deep in them. It’s the person who’s awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one’s failings is a sign of health. So let us rouse ourselves, so that we may be able to demonstrate our errors.

19/ Philosophy wields an authority of her own; she doesn’t just accept time, she grants one it. She’s not something one takes up in odd moments. She’s an active, full-time mistress, ever present and demanding.

20/ Philosophy tells all other occupations: ‘It’s not my intention to accept whatever time is left over from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.

21/ Death is just not being. What that is like I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me.

22/ We are wrong in holding that death follows after, when in fact it precedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that was before us. What does it matter, after all, whether you cease to be or never begin, when the result of either is that you did not exist?

23/ The person you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die.

24/ There is nothing the wise person does reluctantly. They escape necessity because they will what necessity is going to force on them.

25/ That's all for now. 🙏 for the 'Meditations' recommendation which led me to Seneca @naval