Seneca: "Letters from a Stoic"

                                    Introduction

#Stoicism; the most influential philosophy in the Graeco-Roman world; it had been developed and modified by a succession of thinkers...who showed some fair divergences. As a moral creed, it was based throughout on the following framework of belief: 

• The world is a single great community in which all men are brothers
• The world is ruled by a supreme providence which could be referred to by a variety of names: 
• divine reason
• divine will
• creative reason
• nature
• the spirit (or purpose) of the universe
• destiny
• "the gods"
• It is man's duty to live in conformity with the divine will by bring one's own life into alignment with 'nature's laws' and resigning one self completely and uncomplainingly to whatever fate may send him.

Only be living thus, and not setting too high a value on things which at any moment can be taken away... can he discover that true, unshakable peace and contentment to which ambition, luxury and...avarice are among the great obstacles. 

     Living in accordance with nature means...developing the inborn gift of reason which marks us off as different from the animal world. We are meant to set free or perfect this rational element, this particle of the universal reason, the 'divine spark' in our human makeup...it will show us that there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so, discipline the pleasures and the passions, and generally subordinate the body and emotions to the mind and soul. 

     In this way we shall arrive at the true end of man, happiness, through having attained the one and only good thing in life, the ideal or goal called #arete in Greek and in Latin #virtus-->#Eudaemonia. 

     This, the summum bonum, or 'supreme ideal' is usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities: 

1. Wisdom (moral insight)
2. Courage
3. Self-control
4. Justice

     Doing so enables a man to be self-sufficient #autarkeia, immune to suffering, superior to wounds and upsets of life...

     [Until Seneca] Stoicism had a forbidding aspect which went far to explain its failure to influence the masses. There was something fictional about the sapiens, the wise man or philosopher. This ideal figure seemed...to have somehow become perfect in some sudden transformation long ago; gradual self improvement was hardly discussed. The target it set seemed too high for ordinary men. It stifled and repressed ordinary emotions [to strive after the 4 qualities]. 

     Seneca's contribution to ancient philosophy lay in the humanization of this creed. 

     In statements of man's kinship with a beneficent, even loving, god and a belief in conscience as the divinely inspired 'inner light of the spirit', [Seneca's] attitudes are religions beyond anything in Roman state religion...the tendency of Stoicism was always to exalt man's importance in the universe rather than abase him before a higher authority...virtue was to be looked on as its own reward and vice its own punishment. 

Letter III

     ...If 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...After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge. 

Letter V

   The first thing philosophy promises us is the feeling of fellowship, of belonging to mankind and being members of a community. 

    Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance...one's life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular morality. 

    Limiting one's desires actually helps to cure one of fear: 

                                  

 "Cease to hope and you will cease to fear" -Hecato

     Letter VI

     ...[true friendship] which not hope nor fear concern for personal advantage ever sunders, that friendship in which people are ready to die...something that can never happen when mutual inclination draws two personalities together in a fellowship of desire for all that is honorable. 

Letter VII

     Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one; men learn as they teach. 

Letter VIII

     Spurn everything that is added on by way of decoration and display by unnecessary labor. Reflect that nothing merits admiration except the spirit, the impressiveness of which prevents is from being impressed by anything. 

Letter IX

     The wise man is content with himself and therefore needs no friend...what Epicurus(#Epicureans) objects to in Stilbo and those (Cynics) who believe that the supreme ideal in life is a mind devoid of feeling 

or...impatiens...#apatheia

     The difference between the Epicurean and our own school is this: our wise man feels his troubles but overcomes them, while their wise man does not even feel them. 

     And this is what we mean when we say the wise man is self-content; he is so in the sense that he is able to do without friends, not that he desires to do without them...he bears  the loss of a friend with equanimity. 

     Great pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building up a new one. There is the same difference between having gained a friend and actually gaining a friend as there is between a farmer harvesting and a farmer sowing...when his whole attention is absorbed in concentration on the work he is engaged on, a tremendous sense of satisfaction in created in him by his very absorption. 

     ...the wise man, self-sufficient as he is, still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practising friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle. 

     ...if friendship is something to be sought out for its own sake, the self-contented man is entitled to pursue it. And how does he approach it? In the same way as he would any object of great beauty, not drawn by gain, not out of alarm at the vicissitudes of fortune. To procure friendship only for better and not worse is to rob it of all its dignity. 

     'The wise man is content with himself' --[the saying] applies him so far as happiness in life is concerned: for this all he needs is a rational and elevated spirit that treats fortune with disdain; for the actual business of living he needs a greater number of things. 

     Self-contented as ht is, then, he does not need friends - and wants as many of them as possible - but not to enable him to lead a happy life; this he will have even without friends. The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids. It is home-grown and wholly self-developed. 

     ...when the universe is dissolved and all the gods are merged in one, finding repose in himself, absorbed in his own thoughts. such...is the way of the wise man: he retires to his inner self, is his own company. 

     'All my possessions are with me' meaning...the qualities of a just, and good and enlightened character and indeed the very fact of not regarding as valuable anything that is capable of being taken away. 

     What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?

Letter XI

     For no amount of wisdom enables one to do away with the physical or mental weaknesses that arise from natural causes; anything inborn or ingrained in one can by dint of practice be allayed but not overcome. #Schopenhauer's Will

    "We need to set our affections on some food 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." - Epicurus

     The personality should be provided with someone it can revere, someone whose influence can make even its private, inner life, more pure. Happy the man who improves other people not merely when he is in their presence but even when he is in their thoughts!

     There is a need...for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won't make the crooked straight. 

Letter XII

     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. 

Letter XV

     #wisdom

     Without wisdom the mind is sick, and the body itself...can only have the kind of strength that is found in persons of a demented or delirious state. So that this is the sort of healthiness you must make your principal concern...The greater load, moreover, on the body is crushing to the spirit and renders it less active. So keep the body within bounds as much as you can and make room for the spirit. 

     'The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.' 

     [by folly]...means our own life precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring us satisfaction--if they could ever satisfy us they would have done so by now...so be complete and independent of fortune. 

Letter XVI

     #philosophy

     It moulds and builds the personality, orders one's life, regulates one's conduct, shows one what one should do and what one should leave undone, sits at the helm and keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in perilous seas. 

     What helps can philosophy be to me is there is such a thing as fate? What help can it be if there is a deity controlling all? What help can it be if all is governed by chance? 

    It is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us. She will encourage us to submit to God with cheerfulness and to fortune with defiance; she will  show you how to follow God and bear what chance may send you. 

Letter XVIII

     For no one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches. I am not...against possessing them, but I want to ensure that you possess them without tremors; and this you will only achieve in one way, by convincing yourself that you can live a happy life even without them, and by always regarding them as being on the point of vanishing. 

     #passion(anger)

     Anger carried to excess begets madness. It is a passion which flares up against all types of people. It is born of love as well as hate, and is as liable to arise in the course of sport or jesting as in affairs of a serious kind...the outcome of violent anger is a mental raving, and therefore anger is to be avoided not for the sake of moderation but for the sake of sanity. 

Letter XXVI

#Death

     Away with the world's opinion of you - it's always unsettled and divided. Away with the pursuits that have occupied the whole of your life - death is going to deliver the verdict in your case...It's only when breathing your last that the way you've spent your time will become apparent. I accept the terms and feel no dread of the coming judgment. 

Letter XXVII

     #character, #Eudaemonia

     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. If you want to be successful you must devote all your waking hours and all your efforts to the task personally. This is not something that admits of delegation. It is a different branch of learning which has room for devilling. 

     A sound mind can neither be bought nor borrowed. And if it were for sale, I doubt whether you would find a buyer. And yet unsound ones are being purchased every day. 

Letter XXVIII

 A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation. -Epicurus

     For a person who is not aware that he is doing anything wrong has no desire to be put right. You have to catch yourself doing it before you can reform. 

Letter XXXIII

     #appearances, #creativity

          You have to examine and consider it as a whole. There is a sequence about the creative process and a work of genius is a synthesis of its individual features from which nothing can be subtracted without disaster. 

**Letter XLI**

     God is near you, is with you, is inside you...there resides within us a divine spirit, which guards us and watches us in the evil and good that we do. As we treat him, so will he treat us. No man is good without God. 

     And if you come across a man who is never alarmed by dangers, never affected by cravings, happy in adversity, calm in the midst of storm, viewing mankind from a higher level and the gods from their own, is it not likely that a feeling will find its way into you of veneration  for him? Is it not  likely that you will say to yourself, "Here is a thing which is too great, too sublime for anyone to regard it as being in the same sort of category as that puny body it inhabits. Into that body there has descended a divine power. The soul that is elevated and well regulated, that passes through any experience as if it counted for comparatively little, that smiles at all the things we fear or pray for, is impelled by a force that comes from heaven. A thing of that soul's height cannot stand without the prop of a deity. 

     a soul possessed of greatness and holiness, which has been sent down into this world in order that we may gain a nearer knowledge of the divine, associates with us, but never loses contact with its source. On that source it depends; that is the direction in which its eyes turn, and the direction it strives to climb in; the manner in which it takes part in our affairs is that of a superior being. 

     No one should feel pride in anything that is not his own...Fruitfulness is the vine's peculiar virtue. 

     [Man's] spirit, and the perfection of his reason in that spirit [is like the fruitfulness of the vine]. For man is a rational animal. Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born. 

**Letter XLVIII**

     #Friendship, #philosophy

     Friendship creates a community of interest between us in everything. We have neither successes nor setbacks as individuals; our lives have a common end. No one can lead a happy life if he things only of himself and turns everything to his own purposes...The assiduous and scrupulous cultivation of this bond, which leads to our associating with our fellow-men and believes in the existence of a common law for all mankind, contributes more than anything else to the maintenance of that more intimate bond...friendship. 

     Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel. 

     You've pledged to bring succour to the shipwrecked, to those in captivity, to the sick, the needy and men who are just placing their head's beneath the executioner's uplifted axe. 

     All mankind are stretching out their hands to you on every side. Lives that have been ruined, lives that are on the way to ruin are appealing for some help; it is to you that they look for hope and assistance. 

     For that is what philosophy has promised me - that she will make me God's equal. That's the invitation and that's what I've come for; be as good as your word. 

     Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. 

**Letter LIII**

     I began to reflect how we are attended by an appalling forgetfulness of our weaknesses, even the physical ones which are continually bringing themselves to our notice, and much more so with those that are not only more serious but seemingly less apparent. 

     With afflictions of the spirit...the worse a person is, the less he feels it. 

     [Akin to a heavy, dreamless sleep]... the mind is to deep for consciousness of self...It's the person who's awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one's failings is a sign of health. So let us rouse ourselves, so that we may be able to demonstrate our errors. But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. 

     There is one thing in which the wise man actually surpasses any god: a god has nature to thank for his immunity from fear, while the wise man can thank his own efforts for this. Look at this for an achievement, to have all the frailty of a human being and all the freedom from care of a god. 

Letter LV

     [the philosopher] He alone knows how to live for himself; he is the one who knows the fundamental thing, how to live. 

     The fact that a person [the anti philosopher] is living for nobody does not mean that he is living for himself. Still, a persevering steadfastness of purpose counts for a lot, so that even inertia if stubbornly maintained may carry a certain weight. 

     The place one's in doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind: it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself. 

     Possession of a friend should be with the spirit: the spirit's never absent: it sees daily whoever it likes. 

Letter LVI

     The only true serenity is the one which represents the free development of a sound mind. 

Letter LXIII

#Sorrow, #Friendship

     When one has lost a fried one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation. [As lamentation indicates] We are not being governed by our grief but parading it. 

     Inevitable as it is that the names of persons who were dear to us and are now lost should cause us a gnawing sort of pain when we think of them, that pain is not without a pleasure of its own. 

     "In the pleasure we find in the memory of departed friends there is a resemblance to the way in which certain bitter fruits are agreeable or the very acidity of an exceedingly old wind has its attraction. But after a certain interval all that pained us is obliterated and the enjoyment comes to us unalloyed." 

     Thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet and mellow. For when I had them with me it was with the feeling that I was going to lose them, and now that I have lost them I keep the feeling that I have them with me still. 

      If we have no other friends, we have done ourselves a greater injury than fortune has done us: She has deprived us of a single friend but we have deprived ourselves of every friend we have failed to make.

     You have buried someone you loved. Now look for someone else to love. It is better to make good the loss of a friend than to cry over him.  

Letter LXV

#Stoicism, #Platonism, #Creativity

     Stoic philosophers maintain there are two elements in the universe from which all things are derived: Cause and Matter. 

• Matter lies inert and inactive, a substance unlimited potential but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion.
• Cause (aka Reason-->God) turns Matter to whatever end it wishes and fashions it into a variety of different products. 

     There must be something out of which things come into being and something else by means of which things come into being. 

     Stoics believe there is only one cause - that which brings things into being. 

     Aristotle thinks the term 'cause'  can be used in 3 different manners. The first cause is matter - without it nothing can be brought into existence. The second is the craftsman, and the third is form/idios. 

     A "fourth cause" is the end in view of its making, for had this not existed the statue [an example] would not have been made at all. What is this end? It is what attracted the sculptor, what his goal was in creating it. 

     Plato adds a fifth cause to the model - what he calls the idea - this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work. [Vision]. 

     God has within himself models like this of everything in the universe, his mind embracing the designs and calculations for his projects; he is full of these images which Plato calls ideas; eternal, immutable, ever dynamic. So though human beings may perish, humanity in itself - the pattern on which every human being is molded - lasts on. 

   What is the end God has in view? Goodness. 

    Plato: 'what is the cause of God's creating the universe? He is good, and whoever is good can never be grudging with anything good; so he made it as good a world as it was in his power to make it. 

     What we are looking for at the moment is a primary and general cause. And this must be something elementary, since matter too is elementary. If we ask what cause is, surely the answer is creative reason, that is to say God. All those things which you have listed are not an array of individual causes, but dependent on as single one, the cause that actually creates. 

     The soul is in captivity unless philosophy comes to its rescue, bidding it breathe more freely in contemplation of nature. 

     When craftsmen engaged on some intricate piece of work which imposes a tiring strain on the eyes...they go out  into the open air and treat their eyes to free sunshine in some open space...[Likewise] the soul, shut away in this dim and dismal dwelling, as often as it can makes for the open and finds its relaxation in contemplating the natural universe. The wise man and devotee of philosophy is needless to say inseparable from his body, and yet he is detached from it so far as the best of part of his personality is concerned. 

     I am too great, was born to too great a destiny to be my body's slave[!]

     [the] body is all that is vulnerable about me: within this dwelling so liable to injury lives a spirit that is free. Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never shall it drive me to any pretense unworthy of a good man; never shall I tell a lie out of consideration for this petty body. 

     We know that everything in the universe is composed of matter and God. God, encompassed within them, controls them all, they follow his leadership and guidance. Greater power and greater value reside in that which creates (ie, God) than in the matter on which God works. Well, the place which in this universe is occupied by God is in man the place of the spirit. 

Letter LXXVIII

#Friendship

     [Seneca's] advice to you: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear. 

     What makes people who are morally unenlightened upset by the experience of physical distress is their failure to acquire the habit of contentment with the spirit. They have instead been preoccupied with the body. That is why a man of noble and enlightened character separates body from spirit and has just  as much to do with the former, the frail and complaining part of our nature, as is necessary and not more, and a lot to do with the better, the divine element. 

     Everything hangs on one's thinking. The love of power or money or luxurious living are not the only things which are guided by popular thinking...

     He should put his whole heart into the fight against them. If he gives way before them he will lose the battle; if he exerts himself against them he will win. What in fact most people do is pull down their heads what they should be holding up against...

     Let us too overcome all things, with our reward consisting not in any wreath or garland, not in trumpet-calls for silence for the ceremonial proclamation of our name, but in moral worth, in strength of spirit in a peace that is won for ever once in any contest fortune has been utterly defeated. 

     And so we shall as soon as we have learnt to distinguish the good things from the bad things in this world. Then and only then shall we stop being weary of living as well as scared of dying. For a life spent viewing all the variety, the majesty, the sublimity in things around us can never succumb to ennui: the feeling that one is tired of being, of existing, is usually the result of an idle and inactive leisure. 

     Cling tooth and nail to the following 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, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. 

Letter LXXXIII

#reflection/meditation

     For what can be gained if something is concealed from man when nothing is barred from God? He is present in our minds, in attendance in the midst of our thoughts - although by attendance I did not mean to suggest that he is not at times absent from our thoughts. 

     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. 

Letter LXXXVIII

#philosophy, #wisdom, #virtue

     I have no respect for any study[liberal studies] whatsoever if its end is making of money. 

     ...there is only one liberal study that deserves the name - because it makes a person free - and that is the pursuit of wisdom. Its high ideals, its steadfastness and spirit make all other studies puerile and puny in comparison. 

     Well, if you are such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small it is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life? 

     So when it comes to character the liberal arts open the way to it rather than carry the personality all the way there...

     [liberal studies do not confer automatically through study]:

• Bravery (treating with contempt thing ordinarily inspiring fear)
• Loyalty (the most sacred quality that can be found in the human breast; never corrupted or driven to betray)
• Self-Control (maintaining command of the pleasures, passions) 
• Humanity (the trait which stops one from being arrogant toward one's fellows, or acrimony)

       In words, in actions, in emotions she [Humanity] reveals herself as kind and good-natured toward all. To her the troubles of anyone else are her own, and anything that benefits herself she welcomes because it will be of benefit to someone else. Do liberal studies inculcate these attitudes? No [not completely]. 

     Wisdom does not lie in books. Wisdom publishes not words but truths. 

     Virtue will not bring herself to enter the limited space we offer her; something of great size requires plenty of room. Let everything else be evicted, and your heart completely opened to her.  

Letter XC 

#philosophy    

      ...life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy. 

     ...there is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her. 

     Philosophy has the single task of discovering  the truth about the divine and human worlds. The religious conscience, the sense of duty, justice and all the rest of the close-knit interdependent 'company of virtues', never leave her side. Philosophy has taught men to worship what is divine, to love what is human, telling us that with the gods belongs authority, and among human beings fellowship. That fellowship lasted for a long time intact, before men's greed[extravagance] broke society up. 

     ...that age before there existed architects or builders was a happy age. The squaring off of timbers, the accurate cutting of beams with a saw that travels along a marked out line, all these things came in with extravagance. 

     ...For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold. 

     It was human ingenuity, not wisdom, which discovered all that. 

     [the hammer and tongs] were both invented by some individual of an alert, perceptive turn of mind, but not one with the qualities of greatness or of inspiration. 

     The wise man then followed a simple way of life...follow nature and you will feel no need of craftsmen. [Nature provided humanity with all necessities at the beginning, everything else is a distraction.]

     ...the bounds of nature, which set a limit to man's wants by relieving them only where there is necessity for such relief, have been lost sight of; to want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor. 

     Philosophy is far above all this; she does train men's hands: she is an instructress of men's minds. [you may ask] What philosophy has achieved? ...her voice is for peace, calling all mankind to live in harmony. And she is not the manufacturer of equipment for everyday essential purposes. 

     Philosophy takes as her aim that state of happiness/#eudaemonia. That is the direction she routes and guides us. She shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. 

     ...the man who has no need of luck the luckiest man of all, and the man who is master of himself is the master of all. 

     ...avarice and luxury split human beings up and got them to abandon partnership for plunder. [Humans at that time lived at a time marked by [at least according to Seneca] stewardship, fellowship and common law/common property. Avarice and Luxury appears to have had a head start on the practice of philosophy and the result is that people tend to envy the baubles and status symbols of their neighbors rather than practice on their virtue.]

     nature does not five a man virtue: the process of becoming a good man is an art...[it] only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice. 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. 

***Letter CIV***

     Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you...it is no more hard to bear a loss of those whom you love and regard as brightening your existence; for even if they do not grow again they are replaced. 

     If you wish to be stripped of your vices you must get right away from the examples others set of them. 

     For the only safe harbor 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. 

     When she created us, nature endowed us with noble aspirations, and just as she gave certain animals ferocity, others timidity, others cunning, so to us she gave a spirit of exalted ambition; a spirit that takes us in search of a life of, not the greatest safety, but the greatest honor - a spirit very like the universe, which, so far as mortal footsteps may, it follows and adopts as a model.  It is self-assertive; it feels assured of honor and respect; it is master of all things; it is above all things; it should accordingly give into nothing; in nothing should it see a burden calculated to bow the shoulders of man. 

     You will see the capacity of man for hardship...[In Marcus Cato's life]

     We can show as spirited an attitude to just the same things if only we will choose to slip the yokes from our necks. But first we have to reject the life of pleasures...we need to look down on wealth, which is the wage of slavery. Gold and Silver and everything else that clutters our prosperous homes should be discarded. Freedom cannot be won without sacrifice. If you set a high value on her, everything else must be valued at little. 

Letter CV

     Now thing of the things that goad man into destroying man: 

• Contempt (least important)
• Hope
• Envy
• Hatred

     People should see that you not a person it is dangerous to offend: and with you reconciliation should be both easy and dependable...slave or free, there isn't a man who hasn't power enough to do you injury. To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror in others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself. 

     But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking to other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. 

     Never to wrong others takes one a long way toward peace of mind. People who know self-restraint leads stormy and disordered lives, passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others. 

Letter CVII

     There are conditions of our existence which we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit, such a spirit as befits a good man, so that we may bear up bravely under all that fortune sends us an bring us and bring our wills into tune with nature's; reversals, after all, are the means by which nature regulates this visible realm of hers..it is by means of opposites that eternity endures. 

Lead me, Master of the soaring Vault

Of Heaven, lead me, Father where you will. 

I stand here prompt and eager to obey. 

And ev'n suppose I were unwilling, still

I should attend you and know suffering,

 Dishonorable and grumbling, when I might

Have done so and been good as well. For Fate

The willing leads, the unwilling drags along. 

-Cleanthes

     Let fate find us ready and eager. Here [Cleanthes' prayer] is your noble spirit - the one which has put itself in the hands of fate; on the other side we have the puny degenerate spirit which struggles, and which sees nothing right in the way the universe is ordered, and would rather reform the gods than reform itself. 

Letter CVIII

     The subject you ask me about is one of those in which knowledge has no other justification than the knowledge itself. 

     'A person teaching and a person learning should have the same end in view: the improvement of the latter.' A person who goes to a philosopher should carry away with him something or other of value every day; he should return home a sounder man or at least more capable of becoming one. And he will: for the power of philosophy is such that she helps not only those who devote themselves to her but also those you come into contact with her. 

     [students] They are deeply affected by the words and become the persons they are told to be - or would if the impression on their mind were to last, if this magnificent enthusiasm were not immediately intercepted by that discourager of noble conduct, the crowd...

     When you see them in such a mood, keep at them and drive this home...having nothing to do with plays on words, syllogisms, sophistries and all the other toys of sterile intellectual cleverness. Speak out against the love of money. Speak out against extravagance...It is hardly believable how much can be achieved by this sort of speech, aimed at curing people, wholly directed to the good of the people listening. [#Theos] When the character i impressionable it is easily won over to a passion for what is noble and honorable; while a person's character is still malleable, and only corrupted to a mild degree, truth strikes deep if she finds the right kind of  advocate. 

Letter CXIV

     'People's speech matches their lives" - Greek proverb

     And just as the way in which each individual expresses himself resembles the way he acts, so in the case of a nation of declining morals and given over t luxury forms of expression...mirror the general behavior of that society...The spirit and the intellect cannot be of different hues. If the spirit is sound, if it is properly adjusted and has dignity and self-control, the intellect will be sober and sensible too. 

     Once a person's spirit has acquired the habit of disdaining what is customary and regards the usual as banal, it starts looking for novelty in its methods of expression as well.

Letter CXXII

     You needn't be surprised to discover so much individuality where vices are concerned. Vices are manifold, take countless different forms and are incapable of classification. Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits of infinite variations. It is the same with people's characters. 

     One of the causes of troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the examples of others; instead of being set to rights by reason we are seduced by convention. 

     Once they have become general, mistaken ways acquire in our minds the status of correct ones. 

     How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same. 

     No man is good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt. Pleasure is a poor and petty thing. No value should be set on it: it's something we share with dumb animals - the minutest, most insignificant creatures scutter after it. Glory's an empty, changeable thing, as fickle as the weather. Poverty's no evil to anyone unless he kicks against it. Death is not an evil. What is it then? The one law mankind has that is free from all discrimination.