• But let even your entertainment be work; and even from these various forms of entertainment you will select, if you have been watchful, something that may prove wholesome.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • And we ought to bear the absence of friends cheerfully, just because everyone is bound to be often absent from his friends even when they are present. Include among such cases, in the first place, the nights spent apart, then the different engagements which each of two friends has, then the private studies of each and their excursions into the country, and you will see that foreign travel does not rob us of much. 11. A friend should be retained in the spirit; such a friend can never be absent. He can see every day whomsoever he desires to see.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Therefore, a man occupied with such reflections should choose an austere and pure dwelling-place. The spirit is weakened by surroundings that are too pleasant, and without a doubt one’s place of residence can contribute towards impairing its vigour. Animals whose hoofs are hardened on rough ground can travel any road; but when they are fattened on soft marshy meadows their hoofs are soon worn out.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • How mad is he who leaves the lecture-room in a happy frame of mind simply because of applause from the ignorant! Why do you take pleasure in being praised by men whom you yourself cannot praise?

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • O when shall you see the time when you shall know that time means nothing to you, when you shall be peaceful and calm, careless of the morrow, because you are enjoying your life to the full?

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Make progress, and, before all else, endeavour to be consistent with yourself. And when you would find out whether you have accomplished anything, consider whether you desire the same things today that you desired yesterday. A shifting of the will indicates that the mind is at sea, heading in various directions, according to the course of the wind.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Observe such men, and you will note that within a short space of time they laugh to excess and rage to excess.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Some boast of their faults. Do you think that the man has any thought of mending his ways who counts over his vices as if they were virtues?

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • That trouble once removed, all change of scene will become pleasant; though you may be driven to the uttermost ends of the earth, in whatever corner of a savage land you may find yourself, that place, however forbidding, will be to you a hospitable abode. The person you are matters more than the place to which you go; for that reason we should not make the mind a bondsman to any one place. Live in this belief: “I am not born for any one corner of the universe; this whole world is my country.”

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • “What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things.”

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic