100 Top Quotes From Letters from Stoic
"Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca, the ancient Roman philosopher, serves as a timeless collection of philosophical letters that continue to inspire and guide readers centuries after their creation. Written to his friend Lucilius, these letters encapsulate Seneca's teachings on Stoicism, addressing a wide range of topics, from moral philosophy and human nature to the pursuit of happiness and living a meaningful life.
Seneca's profound insights into the human condition and his practical advice for coping with life's challenges resonate as much today as they did in ancient times. Through his writings, Seneca imparts the wisdom of embracing virtue, cultivating self-discipline, and developing resilience in the face of adversity. The letters offer a profound invitation to reevaluate one's values and actions, encouraging us to lead a life of integrity and mindful awareness. Rooted in timeless wisdom, "Letters from a Stoic" is a beacon of stoic philosophy that continues to encourage readers to seek inner tranquility and wisdom amidst the turbulence of existence. (Letters from Stoic Summary).
Letters from Stoic Quotes
"Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”
"If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.”
"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.” (Meaning)
"It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”
"Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. 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.”
"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
"Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. "
"Fear keeps pace with hope … 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.”
"You should live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.”
"To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”
"To win true freedom you must be a slave to philosophy.”
"Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.”
"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”
"Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do.”
"But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.”
"For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them”
"There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with”
"What really ruins our character is the fact that none of us looks back over his life.”
"The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.”
"What fortune has made yours is not your own.”
"I have learned to be a friend to myself"
"Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.”
"Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.”
"A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.”
"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. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.”
"People who know no self-restraint lead stormy and disordered lives, passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others, never able to relax.”
"For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us.”
"Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.”
"All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.”
"As it is with a play, so it is with life - what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.”
"Hold fast, then, to this sound and wholesome rule of life - that you indulge the body only so far as is needful for good health. The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind.”
"When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner."
"What we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live.”
"When a mind is impressionable and has none too firm a hold on what is right, it must be rescued from the crowd: it is so easy for it to go over to the majority.”
"Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.”
"Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”
"Words need to be sown like seeds. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when in lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size.”
"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. ”
"The more a mind takes in the more it expands.”
"To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.”
"A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it.”
"It is in no man's power to have whatever he wants, but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn't got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way.”
"Life is slavery if the courage to die is absent.”
"No man’s good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt.”
"Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do. Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear - they do one harm after they're past and gone, not merely when they're in prospect. Even when they're over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime, even if it's undetected at the time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable; even if they don't do one any harm, they're fleeting in character. Look around for some enduring good instead. And nothing answers this description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself. A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. Even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene, its appearance is only to be compared to that of clouds which drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light.”
"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.”
"The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.”
"Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
"Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at.”
"It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great.”
"But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation.”
"That you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation”
"Why be concerned about others, come to that, when you've outdone your own self? Set yourself a limit which you couldn't even exceed if you wanted to, and say good-bye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them. If there were anything substantial in them they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness; as it is they simply aggravate the thirst of those who swallow them.”
"Barley porridge, or a crust of barley bread, and water do not make a very cheerful diet, but nothing gives one keener pleasure than having the ability to derive pleasure even from that-- and the feeling of having arrived at something which one cannot be deprived of by any unjust stroke of fortune.”
"No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him. Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths. The very day the ships have made a brave show in the games, they are engulfed.”
"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.”
"For love of bustle is not industry, —it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.”
"For Fate/ The willing leads, the unwilling drags along.”
"The boon that could be given can be withdrawn.”
"However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.”
"Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing.”
"If you have nothing to stir you up and rouse you to action, nothing which will test your resolution by its threats and hostilities; if you recline in unshaken comfort, it is not tranquility; it is merely a flat calm.”
"No man is good by chance. Virtue is something which must be learned.”
"The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.”
"True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”
"Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.”
"The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.”
"It is uncertain where Death will await you; there expect it everywhere.”
"If you look on wealth as a thing to be valued your imaginary poverty will cause you torment.”
"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself."" That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.”
"Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak;”
"Excellence withers without an adversary.”
"If you look on wealth as a thing to be valued you’ll always fancy yourself to be short of the things you need to the extent to which you lag behind what others have.”
"The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”
"What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?”
"An unpopular rule is never long maintained.”
"A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.”
"Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.”
"There is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is our love of life.”
"Possession of a friend should be with the spirit: the spirit's never absent: it sees daily whoever it likes.”
"And when the soul has yielded to pleasure, its functions and actions grow weak, and any undertaking comes from a nerveless and unsteady source.”
"What then is good? The knowledge of things. What is evil? The lack of knowledge of things.”
"Believe me if you consult philosophy she will persuade you not to lit so long at your counting desk”
"For a delight in bustling about is not industry - it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind. And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia.”
"To live under constraint is a misfortune, but there is no constraint to live under constraint.”
"Those who wish their virtue to be advertised are not striving for virtue but for renown. Are you not willing to be just without being renowned? Nay, indeed you must often be just and be at the same time disgraced. And then, if you are wise, let ill repute, well won, be a delight. Farewell.”
"There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.”
"Similarly, too rich a soil makes the grain fall flat, branches break down under too heavy a load, excessive productiveness does not bring fruit to ripeness.”
"Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts!”
"Our Stoic philosophers, as you know, maintain that there are two elements in the universe from which all things are derived, namely cause and matter. Matter lies inert and inactive, a substance with limited potential, but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion; and it is cause (this meaning the same as reason) which turns matter to whatever end it wishes and fashions it into a variety of different products.”
"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.”
"The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.”
"In the ashes all men are levelled. We're born unequal, we die equal.”
"By overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render it less active.”
"What good does it do you to go overseas, to move from city to city? If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
"Humanity is the quality which stops one being arrogant towards one's fellows, or being acrimonious.”
"If he lose a hand through disease or war, or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes, he will be satisfied with what is left, taking as much pleasure in his impaired and maimed body as he took when it was sound. But while he does not pine for these parts if they are missing, he prefers not to lose them. 5. In this sense the wise man is self-sufficient, that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them. When I say ""can,"" I mean this: he endures the loss of a friend with equanimity.”
"What is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it”
"Any man,’ he says, ‘who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world.”
"Prove - and an easy task it is - that so-called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments...”
"The wise man, he said, lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas 'the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lack everything.”
"To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance. Apart from 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. The scholar Didymus wrote four thousand works: I should feel sorry him if he had merely read so many useless works.”
"We are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed, Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.”
"But it is one thing to remember, another to know. Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory; knowing, however, means making everything your own; it means not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master.”
"Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.”
"What's the use of overcoming opponent after opponent in the wrestling or boxing rings if you can be overcome by your temper?”
"Anyone who likes may make things easier for himself by viewing them with equanimity.”
― Quotes from the book Letters from Stoic by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Letters from Stoic Author
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, commonly known as Seneca the Younger, was a prominent Stoic philosopher, statesman, and playwright during the Roman Empire. His philosophical writings, including "Letters from a Stoic" and "On the Shortness of Life," have left a profound impact on the development of Stoicism and continue to resonate with readers today. Seneca's wisdom centers around the pursuit of virtue, living in accordance with nature, and facing life's adversities with equanimity. His eloquent and timeless insights into human nature, ethics, and the art of living a meaningful life offer valuable guidance to navigate the complexities of existence. Seneca's emphasis on self-reflection, humility, and the impermanence of life serves as a poignant reminder for readers to make the most of their time, cultivate inner tranquility, and develop a sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
