Showing results by author "Lucius Anneus Seneca" in All Categories

“If you have lost a son, you have only ceased to hold him; you have not lost him. He is beyond all harm… Nature lends us children not as possessions, but as gifts that must be returned.” The two most personal letters that Seneca wrote were to his mother, after he had been exiled to Corsica...

"You can surpass God himself. He is beyond suffering evil; you are above it. Despise poverty; no man lives as poor as he was born: despise pain; either it will cease or you will: despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere: despise fortune; I have given her no weapon that can reach...

What does it mean to be truly unshakeable? How do you ensure that insult and injury do not harm you? Seneca knew how to endure the unendurable. Despite being one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome, but his life was a sustained exercise in surviving forces beyond his control. He was nearly...

Written as a letter of a friend who’s not sure he’s on the right path De Tranquillitate Animi is one of the most intimate and practical works of Stoic philosophy. Serenus confesses to a restless indecision, a “sickness of the soul” that keeps him vacillating between public duty and...