Seneca Best Quotes

The best ideas are common property

If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.

I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.

Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you, and make the most of them while they are at their best.

No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.

The best remedy for anger is delay

Look for the best and prepare for the worst.

All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.

The best way to avenge yourself is to not be like that.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.6 “How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?” —SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.27.2

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. Polonius

The best compromise between love and good sense is both to feel longing and to conquer it.

So - to the best of your ability - demonstrate your own guilt, conduct inquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself. Play the part first of prosecutor, then of judge, and finally of pleader in mitigation. Be harsh with yourself at times.

All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time is fortune less wisely trusted than when it is best

Seneca may have put it best two thousand years ago: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”51

your mind is the asset that must be worked on most—and understood best.

the best amount of property to have is that which is enough to keep us from poverty, and which yet is not far removed from it.

The best part of life are flitting by, the worse are to come.

These individuals have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever,’ when really the fever has us.” –Seneca Roman Stoic philosopher, famed playwright

If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way.

Any truth, I maintain, is my own property. And I shall continue to heap quotations from Epicurus upon you, 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. Farewell.

But except in rare circumstances, you can train until you’re blue in the face and you’d never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time.” What we’re doing when we multitask “is learning to be skillful at a superficial level.” The Roman philosopher Seneca May have put it best two thousand years ago: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away. The world you see, nature’s greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain.

It is by far the best plan, therefore, to mingle leisure with business, whenever chance impediments or the state of public affairs forbid one's leading an active life: for one is never so cut off from all pursuits as to find no room left for honorable action.

Some therefore consider it to be best to control anger, not to banish it utterly, but to cut off its extravagances, and force it to keep within useful bounds, so as to retain that part of it without which action will become languid and all strength and activity of mind will die away.

When a comedy of Plautus is being played, and the household slaves are cracking trivial jokes together, ou propose to come on stage in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat Seneca's speech to Nero from the Octavia. Wouldn't it be better to take a silent role than to say something wholly inappropriate, and thus turn the play into a tragi-comedy? You pervert a play and ruin it when you add irrelevant speeches, even if they are better than the play itself. So go through with the drama in hand as best you can, and don't spoil it all just because you happen to think of another that would be better.

We are born for it, but not with it. And even in the best of people, until you cultivate it there is only the material for virtue, not virtue itself.

The best way is to avoid people who are not like you and who are preoccupied with other desires.

Who, then, can be more ignorant of nature than he who classes this cruel and hurtful vice as belonging to her best and most polished work?

Our fears are always more numerous than our dangers.”—Seneca the Younger

These individuals have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever,’ when really the fever has us.” –Seneca

It’s not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can.

matters do not stand so well with mankind that the majority should prefer the better course: the more people do a thing the worse it is likely to be. Let us therefore inquire, not what is most commonly done, but what is best for us to do, and what will establish us in the possession of undying happiness, not what is approved of by the vulgar, the worst possible exponents of truth.

You think I hate men. I guess I do, although some of my best friends...I don't like this position. I mistrust generalized hatred. I feel like one of those twelfth century monks raving on about how evil women are and how they must cover themselves up completely when they go out lest they lead men into evil thoughts. The assumption that the men are the ones who matter, and that the women exist only in relation to them, is so silent and underrunning that ever we never picked it up until recently. But after all, look at what we read. I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Freud and Erikson; I read de Montherlant and Joyce and Lawrence and sillier people like Miller and Mailer and Roth and Philip Wylie. I read the Bible and Greek myths and didn't question why all later redactions relegated Gaea-Tellus and Lilith to a footnote and made Saturn the creator of the world. I read or read about, without much question, the Hindus and the Jews, Pythagoras and Aristotle, Seneca, Cato, St.Paul, Luther, Sam Johnson, Rousseau, Swift...well, you understand. For years I didn't take it personally. So now it is difficult for me to call others bigots when I am one myself. I tell people at once, to warn them, that I suffer from deformation of character. But the truth is I am sick unto death of four thousand years of males telling me how rotten my sex is. Especially it makes me sick when I look around and see such rotten men and such magnificent women, all of whom have a sneaking suspicion that the four thousand years of remarks are correct. These days I feel like an outlaw, a criminal. Maybe that's what the people perceive who look at me so strangely as I walk the beach. I feel like an outlaw not only because I think that men are rotten and women are great, but because I have come to believe that oppressed people have the right to use criminal means to survive. Criminal means being, of course, defying the laws passed by the oppressors to keep the oppressed in line. Such a position takes you scarily close to advocating oppression itself, though. We are bound in by the terms of the sentence. Subject-verb-object. The best we can do is turn it around. and that's no answer, is it?

I know not whether wisdom is not best displayed by calmness in the midst of annoyances, just as the greatest proof of a general's strength in arms and men consists in his quietness and confidence in the midst of an enemy's country.

So – to the best of your ability – demonstrate your own guilt, conduct inquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself. Play the part first of prosecutor, then of judge and finally of pleader in mitigation. Be harsh with yourself at times.

The best company is when you are with those who bring out the best in you and those who inspire you to do what you love doing (Something “good.”). Seneca realised that teaching and development comes from learning especially from those who at the time have a deep knowledge of all things and areas. The best teacher is the one who makes it fun and interesting at the same time. Whatever the subject, especially when teaching our children who absorb things so well, the way in which we convey the knowledge is vital to the development process.

For how little have we lost, when the two finest things of all will accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue. Believe me, this was the intention of whoever formed the universe, whether all-powerful god, or incorporeal reason creating mighty works, or divine spirit penetrating all things from greatest to smallest with even pressure, or fate and the unchanging sequence of causation - this, I say, was the intention, that only the most worthless of our possessions should come into the power of another. Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away.

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.

Seneca put it best when he said, “Life is long if you know how to use it.” Sadly, most people don’t—they waste the life they’ve been given. Only when it is too late do they try to compensate for that waste by vainly hoping to put more time on the clock. Use today. Use every day. Make yourself satisfied with what you have been given.

Many men pass by that which is visible, and peer after things hidden and concealed; a locked room invites the thief. Things which lie in the open appear cheap; the house-breaker passes by that which is exposed to view. This is the way of the world, and the way of all ignorant men: they crave to burst in upon hidden things. It is therefore best not to vaunt one's retirement.

The human mind is naturally self-willed, kicks against the goad, and sets its face against authority; it will follow more readily than it can be led. As well-bred and high-spirited horses are best managed with a loose rein, so mercy gives men's minds a spontaneous bias towards innocence, and the public think that it is worth observing. Mercy, therefore, does more good than severity.

How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it’s best to take a bird’s-eye view and see everything all at once—of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets—all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.48

Let this once be clear, that there is nothing good except that which is honourable, and all hardships will have a just title to the name of “goods,” when once virtue has made them honourable. Many think that we Stoics are holding out expectations greater than our human lot admits of; and they have a right to think so. For they have regard to the body only. But let them turn back to the soul, and they will soon measure man by the standard of God. Rouse yourself, most excellent Lucilius, and leave off all this word-play of the philosophers, who reduce a most glorious subject to a matter of syllables, and lower and wear out the soul by teaching fragments; then you will become like the men who discovered these precepts, instead of those who by their teaching do their best to make philosophy seem difficult rather than great.

A series of women's conventions in various parts of the country followed the one at Seneca Falls. At one of these, in 1851, an aged black woman, who had been born a slave in New York, tall, thin, wearing a gray dress and white turban, listened to some male ministers who had been dominating the discussion. This was Sojourner Truth. She rose to her feet and joined the indignation of her race to the indignation of her sex: That man over there says that woman needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches. . . Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles or gives me any best place. And a'nt I a woman? Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! and a'nt I a woman? I would work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it, and bear the lash as well. And a'nt I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen em most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a'nt I a woman?

October 29th CHARACTER IS FATE “Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 47.15b In the hiring process, most employers look at where someone went to school, what jobs they’ve held in the past. This is because past success can be an indicator of future successes. But is it always? There are plenty of people who were successful because of luck. Maybe they got into Oxford or Harvard because of their parents. And what about a young person who hasn’t had time to build a track record? Are they worthless? Of course not. This is why character is a far better measure of a man or woman. Not just for jobs, but for friendships, relationships, for everything. Heraclitus put it as a maxim: “Character is fate.” When you seek to advance your own position in life, character is the best lever—perhaps not in the short term, but certainly over the long term. And the same goes for the people you invite into your life.

GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT. He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. —Bible. The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile. —Plato. The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that. —John Sterling. Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. —Seneca. The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge, must originate in self and be self-directed. —Thomas J. Morgan.

The best and the greatest number of authors have asserted that philosophy consists of three parts: the moral, the natural, and the rational. The first puts the soul in order. The second thoroughly examines the natural order of things. The third inquires into the proper meaning of words, and their arrangements and proofs which keep falsehoods from creeping in to displace truth.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 89.9 These three parts—the moral, the natural, and the rational—have one aim. As different as they are, they have the same purpose: to help you live a good life ruled by reason. Not in the future, but right now.

The best single source for Stoic advice on preventing and dealing with anger is Seneca’s essay “On Anger.” Anger, says Seneca, is “brief insanity,” and the damage done by anger is enormous: “No plague has cost the human race more.” Because of anger, he says, we see all around us people being killed, poisoned, and sued; we see cities and nations ruined. And besides destroying cities and nations, anger can destroy us individually. We live in a world, after all, in which there is much to be angry about, meaning that unless we can learn to control our anger, we will be perpetually angry. Being angry, Seneca concludes, is a waste of precious time.

Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain’s list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. * Most-gifted or recommended books? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Essays of Michel de Montaigne. * Favorite documentary The Up series: This ongoing series is filmed in the UK, and revisits the same group of people every 7 years. It started with their 7th birthdays (Seven Up!) and continues up to present day, when they are in their 50s. Subjects were picked from a wide variety of social backgrounds. Alain calls these very undramatic and quietly powerful films “probably the best documentary that exists.” TF: This is also the favorite of Stephen Dubner on page 574. Stephen says, “If you are at all interested in any kind of science or sociology, or human decision-making, or nurture versus nature, it is the best thing ever.” * Advice to your 30-year-old self? “I would have said, ‘Appreciate what’s good about this moment. Don’t always think that you’re on a permanent journey. Stop and enjoy the view.’ . . . I always had this assumption that if you appreciate the moment, you’re weakening your resolve to improve your circumstances. That’s not true, but I think when you’re young, it’s sort of associated with that. . . . I had people around me who’d say things like, ‘Oh, a flower, nice.’ A little part of me was thinking, ‘You absolute loser. You’ve taken time to appreciate a flower? Do you not have bigger plans? I mean, this the limit of your ambition?’ and when life’s knocked you around a bit and when you’ve seen a few things, and time has happened and you’ve got some years under your belt, you start to think more highly of modest things like flowers and a pretty sky, or just a morning where nothing’s wrong and everyone’s been pretty nice to everyone else. . . . Fortune can do anything with us. We are very fragile creatures. You only need to tap us or hit us in slightly the wrong place. . . . You only have to push us a little bit, and we crack very easily, whether that’s the pressure of disgrace or physical illness, financial pressure, etc. It doesn’t take very much. So, we do have to appreciate every day that goes by without a major disaster.

Tranquillity is a certain equality of mind which no condition of fortune can either exalt or depress. Nothing can make it less, for it is the state of human perfection: it raises us as high as we can go, and makes every man his own supporter, whereas he that is borne up by anything else may fall. He that judges aright, and perseveres in it, enjoys a perpetual calm; he takes a true prospect of things; he observes an order and measure in all his actions; he has a benevolence in his nature; he squares his life according to reason, and draws to himself love and admiration. Without a certain and unchangeable judgment, all the rest is but fluctuation. Liberty and serenity of mind must necessarily ensue upon the mastering of those things, which either allure or affright us, when, instead of these flashy pleasures (which even at the best are both vain and hurtful together), we shall find ourselves possessed of an excellent joy assured and a continual peace and repose of soul.

August 21st DON’T BE MISERABLE IN ADVANCE “It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 98.5b–6a The way we nervously worry about some looming bad news is strange if you think about it. By definition, the waiting means it hasn’t happened yet, so that feeling bad in advance is totally voluntary. But that’s what we do: chewing our nails, feeling sick to our stomachs, rudely brushing aside the people around us. Why? Because something bad might occur soon. The pragmatist, the person of action, is too busy to waste time on such silliness. The pragmatist can’t worry about every possible outcome in advance. Think about it. Best case scenario—if the news turns out to be better than expected, all this time was wasted with needless fear. Worst case scenario—we were miserable for extra time, by choice. And what better use could you make of that time? A day that could be your last—you want to spend it in worry? In what other area could you make some progress while others might be sitting on the edges of their seat, passively awaiting some fate? Let the news come when it does. Be too busy working to care.

Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven knows! I cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I see how anxiously they set out their silver plate, how diligently they tie up the tunics of their pretty slave-boys, how breathlessly they watch to see in what style the wild boar issues from the hands of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smooth-faced boys hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little lads wipe up the spittle of drunkards. By such means they seek the reputation for elegance and good taste, and to such an extent do their evils follow them into all the privacies of life that they can neither eat nor drink without ostentation. And

Instead, he (and Epictetus and Seneca) focused on a series of questions not unlike the ones we continue to ask ourselves today: “What is the best way to live?” “What do I do about my anger?” “What are my obligations to my fellow human beings?” “I’m afraid to die; why is that?” “How can I deal with the difficult situations I face?” “How should I handle the success or power I hold?” These weren’t abstract questions. In their writings—often private letters or diaries—and in their lectures, the Stoics struggled to come up with real, actionable answers. They ultimately framed their work around a series of exercises in three critical disciplines: The Discipline of Perception (how we see and perceive the world around us) The Discipline of Action (the decisions and actions we take—and to what end) The Discipline of Will (how we deal with the things we cannot change, attain clear and convincing judgment, and come to a true understanding of our place in the world) By controlling our perceptions, the Stoics tell us, we can find mental clarity. In directing our actions properly and justly, we’ll be effective. In utilizing and aligning our will, we will find the wisdom and perspective to deal with anything the world puts before us. It was their belief that by strengthening themselves and their fellow citizens in these disciplines, they could cultivate resilience, purpose, and even joy. Born in the tumultuous ancient world,

Why aren’t you in Canada?” “That’s pretty much none of your business. I guess Rising Hawk never told you about Oniata, the Dry Hand?” Livy glared at him. “You’d best watch out for it. It’s a hand that flies around looking for nosy people and pokes their eyes out.” “My father and Uncle John fought Butler and Johnson. They were at Cherry Valley. Were you? They said the Indians had a Seneca war chief. Did you go?” “No. Would it matter?” “My father and Uncle John helped bury the bodies afterwards. Women and children, even babies, lying butchered in the snow. The slush was red, mixed with their blood. A hundred or more.” “There were thirty killed, Livy. Your uncle was exaggerating.” “My uncle said that when the scalp’s off a body, the mouth hangs all slack in a scream, and he said the Indians killed babies by dashing their brains out.” “He shouldn’t have told you that. It’s not fitting for a child.” “Neither’s getting your brains dashed out.

Unfortunately, Stoicism proved impossible to teach to anyone who didn’t already find its ideas and practices emotionally appealing. Anyone else trained along Stoic lines simply ended up learning how to pursue irrational ends with a Stoic’s focused will and utter disregard for popular opinion. The Roman emperor Claudius, for example, arranged to give his stepson the best available Stoic training at the hands of Seneca the Younger, one of the great Roman Stoic philosophers. The young man’s name was Nero; you may have heard of him, but probably not as a model of Stoic virtue. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, himself a Stoic philosopher of no mean skill, tried the same thing with his son Commodus, and the results were nearly as bad.

So that wasn’t much help. I was torn. I wanted to be judged on what I did, not on what I represented or what people projected onto me. But I understood how much this breakthrough would mean to the country, especially to girls and boys who would see that there are no limits on what women can achieve. I wanted to honor that significance. I just didn’t know the best way to do it. I carried all that uncertainty with me back from California, all the way to David Muir’s interview room in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Tuesday night. Results were starting to come in. I won the New Jersey primary. Bernie won the North Dakota caucus. The big prize, California, was still out there, but all signs pointed to another victory. Bill and I had worked hard on my speech, but I still felt unsettled. Maybe it was about not being ready to accept “yes” for an answer. I had worked so hard to get to this moment, and now that it had arrived, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. Then Muir walked me over to the window, and I looked out at that crowd—at thousands of people who’d worked their hearts out, resisted the negativity of a divisive primary and relentlessly harsh press coverage, and poured their dreams into my campaign. We’d had big crowds before, but this felt different. It was something more than the enthusiasm I saw on the trail. It was a pulsing energy, an outpouring of love and hope and joy. For a moment, I was overwhelmed—and then calm. This was right. I was ready. After the interview, I went downstairs to where my husband was sitting with the speechwriters going over final tweaks to the draft. I read it over one more time and felt good. Just as they were racing off to load the speech into the teleprompter, I said I had one more thing to add: “I’m going to talk about Seneca Falls. Just put a placeholder in brackets and I’ll take care of it.” I took a deep breath. I didn’t want the emotion of the moment to get to me in the middle of my speech. I said a little prayer and then headed for the stage. At the last moment, Huma grabbed my arm and

What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. New thought came more readily to a brain that had already learned how to rearrange itself to read. By allowing us to filter out distractions, to quiet the problem-solving functions of the frontal lobes, deep reading becomes a form of deep thinking. People who read linear text comprehend more, remember more and learn more than those who read text peppered with links. Frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory and make us tense and anxious. Improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively. What we are doing when we multitask is learning to be skillful at a superficial level. The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best two thousand years ago: "To be everywhere is to be nowhere." After spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition.

For the Stoics, then, our judgments about the world are all that we can control, but also all that we need to control in order to be happy; tranquility results from replacing our irrational judgments with rational ones. And dwelling on the worst-case scenario, the ‘premeditation of evils’, is often the best way to achieve this – even to the point, Seneca suggests, of deliberately experiencing those ‘evils’, so as to grasp that they might not be as bad as you’d irrationally feared.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca (4BC

Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 108.27b–28a

You will only get one shot at today. You have only twenty-four hours with which to take it. And then it is gone and lost forever. Will you fully inhabit all of today? Will you call out, “I’ve got this,” and do your very best to be your very best? What will you manage to make of today before it slips from your fingers and becomes the past? When someone asks you what you did yesterday, do you really want the answer to be “nothing”?

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands. It is best to bear what can’t be altered. SENECA

I am not a wise man, and, so please your malice, I never shall be. I therefore do not claim to be equal with the best, but only better than the worst. Enough for me if every day I make some little progress, and can clearly see and denounce my own errors. I am not cured; I never shall be cured. I contrive palliations rather than remedies for my malady; and am content if its attacks become gradually rarer.

Not out of ivory only [he tells us] was Phidias skilled in making statues, he made them of bronze; if you brought marble or any cheaper material to him he would turn it to the best use of which it was capable. So, if riches fall to him, the wise man will display his wisdom amidst riches, if not, then in poverty; if he can, in his native country, if not, then in exile; if he can, as a general, if not, then as a soldier; if he can, in health, if not, then in sickness. Whatever fortune befall him, he will carve out of it something memorable.

I have always abstained from using scent, as the best smell a body can have is no smell at all. This is why no wine ever finds its way into my stomach. This is the reason for my life-long avoidance of hot baths, believing as I do that it is effeminate as well as pointless to stew one’s body and exhaust it with continual sweating.

Seneca put it best when he said, “Life is long if you know how to use it.

The number of years we manage to eke out doesn’t matter, only what those years are composed of. Seneca put it best when he said, “Life is long if you know how to use it.” Sadly, most people don’t—they waste the life they’ve been given. Only when it is too late do they try to compensate for that waste by vainly hoping to put more time on the clock. Use today. Use every day. Make yourself satisfied with what you have been given.

Given this obvious objection, a more nuanced understanding of the seemingly less prudential approach is perhaps in order. The idea behind the words of Jesus and Seneca is presumably not that we should eschew future planning entirely; after all, some of Jesus’s best-known parables, which describe activities like manuring a fig tree, or repairing garments to make them durable, seem to applaud forward-looking prudence. The key idea is, rather, that we should cultivate habits of mind which make us less attached to things we may well lose, especially material possessions. We will then be less anxious in the present, and better prepared to deal with adversity when it comes. That is how they connect simplicity to serenity.

Traditions are often time-tested best practices for doing something. But remember that today’s conservative ideas were once controversial, cutting-edge, and innovative. This is why we can’t be afraid to experiment with new ideas. In Seneca’s case, he might be embracing some new philosophical insight that improves on the writing of Zeno or Cleanthes. In our case, perhaps a breakthrough in psychology improves on the writing of Seneca or Marcus Aurelius. Or perhaps we have a breakthrough of our own. If these ideas are true and better, embrace them—use them. You don’t need to be a prisoner of dead old men who stopped learning two thousand years ago.

I don’t know why it’s you, I just know that it is, Seneca,” he said. “So, before I lay you out on my bed and do my best to ruin you, I want you to understand that I’m in this for the long haul. This is real for me.” “I…” I had to clear my throat. “I’m not sure what to say to that.” “I’m not expecting you to say anything,” he replied. “I’m just telling you what the expectation is when it comes to our relationship.” “Mine or yours?” His lips twitched in a smirk. “Yours,” he answered. “I already know what’s expected of me.” “Oh, yeah? And what is expected of you?” “I’m expected to love you, protect you, provide for you, and do whatever else it is that you might need me to do,” he said, and I could feel my knees weaken. “You might as well know now how this works, baby.” “And how does it work?” “We might as well be married,” he said right before his lips found mine.

Consciously consider whom you allow into your life—not like some snobby elitist but like someone who is trying to cultivate the best life possible. Ask yourself about the people you meet and spend time with: Are they making me better? Do they encourage me to push forward and hold me accountable? Or do they drag me down to their level? Now, with this in mind, ask the most important question: Should I spend more or less time with these folks?

focus every bit of yourself on being the best person you can be in the present moment. On doing the right thing, right now. The distant future is irrelevant. Be good and noble and impressive now—while it still matters.

Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is “not out to get you,” you’re just experiencing some of the rough spots of daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it’ll help you get a more balanced perspective. Angry people tend to demand things: fairness, appreciation, agreement, willingness to do things their way. Everyone wants these things, and we are all hurt and disappointed when we don’t get them, but angry people demand them, and when their demands aren’t met, their disappointment becomes anger.27

How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?” —SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.27.2

There is nothing that the busy man is less busy with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” –Seneca

Above all, the life of the mind puts us in touch with the best minds of mankind and allows us to travel freely across time and space. None of the giants of the past will be too busy to see us, and none will allow us to depart empty-handed. In Seneca’s words, “they are at home to all mortals by night and day.” By engaging with their writings, we participate in centuries-old conversations on the meaning of life, the good society, the nature of the cosmos, and such like. Thus, those who pursue the life of the mind can transcend their limited viewpoint and gain access to larger vistas. Then “the walls of the world fly apart,” in Cicero’s words, and we receive the precious gift of the panoramic view from above

What’s tranquility anyway? Seneca talks about the power of euthymia in his classic letters. He tells us that euthymia, which gets translated as tranquility, is all about knowing your path and walking that path. It’s the feeling we get when we truly and utterly trust ourselves. You’re confident that what you’re doing is right, and you don’t need to listen left and right for what others have to say. You don’t need to second guess and compare yourself to others all the time. You trust in what you’re doing because you’re trying your best, and you’re living accordingly to your values and know it’s all you can do.

To decide how best to live (ethics), one has to understand how the world works (physics) and reason appropriately about it (logic). Which brings us to the idea of living according to nature. The most important aspects of human nature, the Stoics thought, are twofold: that we are social animals (and are then deeply interdependent with other people) and that we are capable of reasoning-based problem solving. So to live according to nature means using reason to improve social living. Or as Seneca put it, “Bring the mind to bear upon your problems.

I am not a wise man, nor—to feed your malevolence!—shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes…. What I say is not spoken on my own behalf—for I am sunk in deep vice of every kind—but on behalf of the man who has actually achieved something. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Let’s ask, then, what it is best to do, not what is most commonly done, and what will make us happy forever, not what is approved by the general public, the truth’s worst interpreter.… I have a better, more reliable light to use in distinguishing the true from the false: let the mind discover the mind’s own good. If ever the mind is free to catch its breath and rely on its own resources, how it will rack itself and confess the truth, saying “Whatever I have done, I would wish it was yet undone; when I recall all that I have said, I envy the mute.… I have made every effort to distinguish myself from the many and make myself noteworthy through some talent: what have I achieved beyond exposing myself to a gnawing malice? Why not rather seek some good that I can actually experience, not hold out for show? The things that catch the eye and draw a crowd, that one astonished person points out to another—they are glittering on the outside but are wretched within.

As the Roman Empire grew and newly enslaved people were flooding into the city of Rome along with the necessary wealth that allowed those at the top to enslave hundreds or thousands of them, Roman enslavers suddenly became very afraid that they were outnumbered. This became an especial fear as mass slave-owning became a marker of wealth and privilege and conspicuous consumption. Romans took to owning people like modern-day social media influencers have taken to owning Hermès Birkin bags. But unlike a handbag, enslaved people could be dangerous: the more enslaved people one purchased, the more sad and pissed-off people were literally in your house to hate you. Seneca, that old Stoic, wrote about this a few times. He famously said that a (rich, slave-owning) man had as many enemies as he had slaves. He also recorded an interesting senatorial debate about whether enslaved people in Rome should be forced to wear some kind of special clothing to make their status visible and unambiguous. The proposal was voted down because the enslavers feared that if the people they enslaved could see how many of them there were in the city, they’d feel the strength of their numbers and possibly act on it. Such a reasoning is probably nonsense, not least because in a household of four hundred enslaved people everyone definitely knew that they outnumbered their one enslaver, but it’s interesting that the rich experienced some anxiety about their actions. But, being Romans and being hugely wealthy men, and being very, very dedicated to the institution of slavery, the best solution the Senate could come up with was to terrorise those they enslaved into being too afraid to act against those who enslaved them.