• Observe yourself, then, and see whether your dress and your house are inconsistent, whether you treat yourself lavishly and your family meanly, whether you eat frugal dinners and yet build luxurious houses. You should lay hold, once for all, upon a single norm to live by, and should regulate your whole life according to this norm.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting; but it shows greater self-control to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in a different way,—thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor becoming one of the crowd. For one may keep holiday without extravagance.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Riches have shut off many a man from the attainment of wisdom; poverty is unburdened and free from care.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • by overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render it less active. Accordingly, limit the flesh as much as possible, and allow free play to the spirit.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • 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.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

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

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Speak both in the senate and to every man, whoever he may be, appropriately, not with any affectation: use plain discourse.

    —Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus