Letters From A Stoic: Best Quotes
Practical insights of Stoicism that stand the test of time
Hey everyone,
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! This week I decided to post my notes from Stoic philosopher Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. This work has greatly influenced my thinking and offers excellent life advice.
I hope you enjoy!
Baxter
🌄 Overview
An excellent introduction to Stoicism and virtue ethics. Although it’s nearly 2,000 years old, these letters offer excellent life advice on many topics, like anxiety, friendship, lifestyle, being a good person, and much more. Word to the wise: don’t read this before bed.
✍️ Quotes
I’ve put my favorite ones directly below, then broken them down by Stoicism practices and other categories.
Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone.
The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events.
So let us bear it constantly in mind that those we are fond of are just as liable to death as we are ourselves. What I should have said before was, ‘My friend Serenus is younger than I am, but what difference does that make? He should die later than me, but it is quite possible he will die before me.’ ... Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.
Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.
Amor Fati (love of fate and acceptance)
They should assume that whatever happens was bound to happen and refrain from railing at nature. One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured and attend uncomplainingly ... It is a poor soldier that follows his commander grumbling. So let us perceive our orders readily and cheerfully, and not desert the ranks along the march - the march of this glorious fabric of creation in which everything we shall suffer is a strand.
As for the uncertain lot that the future has in store for me, why should I demand from fortune that she should give me this and that rather than demand from myself that I should not ask for them?
Premeditatio Malorum (premeditation of evils)
The fact that is was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events.
Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck ... we should be anticipating not merely all that commonly happens but all that is conceivably capable of happening, if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones.
Memento Mori (remember, you will die)
A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
If God adds the morrow we should accept it joyfully. The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others. Whoever has said ‘I have lived’ receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning.
So let us bear it constantly in mind that those we are fond of are just as liable to death as we are ourselves. What I should have said before was, ‘My friend Serenus is younger than I am, but what difference does that make? He should die later than me, but it is quite possible he will die before me.’ ... Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.
On Wealth
It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.
On Fear, Hope, and Anxiety
Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ‘and you will cease to fear.’ ... Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present (38)
‘The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future’
Knowledge
Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone.
What really ruins our characters is the fact that none of us looks back over his life. We think about what we are going to do, and only rarely of that, and fail to think about what we have done, yet any plans for the future are dependent on the past.
Perception
A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
Rehearse Poverty
Set aside now and then a number of days during which you will be content with the plainest of food, and very little of it, and with rough, coarse clothing, and will ask yourself, ‘Is this what one used to dread?’
On Liberal Arts
The attainment of wisdom is perfectly possible without liberal studies; although moral values are things which have to be learnt, they are not learnt through these studies.
Apart from this which this kind of obsession with the liberal arts turns people into pedantic, irritating, tactless, self-satisfied bores, not learning what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need.
Mentors
We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.
Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves.
Be a Good Person
‘If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich’
Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.
Everyone is a Slave
‘He’s a slave.’ But he may have the spirit of a free man. ‘He’s a slave.’ But is that really to count against him? Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear.
On Adversity
In the meantime cling tooth and nail to the followig 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 ... Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes less of a shock.
A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights.
There’s No Need to Follow the Crowd
No need to do as the crowd does: to follow the common, well-worn path in life is a sordid way to behave.
One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others; instead of being set to rights by reason, we’re seduced by convention.
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