Letters from a stoic

What counts, he says, is one’s attitude to wealth, which is the wise man’s servant and the fool’s master

Wisdom (or moral insight), courage, self-control and justice (or upright dealing). It enables a man to be ‘self-sufficient’, immune to suffering, superior to the wounds and upsets of life

‘The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.’

People who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships.

Food that is vomited up as soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body and does not do one any good;

Each day, too, acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well. After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.

Those people who, contrary to Theophrastus’ advice, judge a man after they have made him their friend instead of the other way round, certainly put the cart before the horse.

Refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement, by doing certain things which are calculated to give rise to comment on your appearance or way of living generally.

Let our aim be a way of life not diametrically opposed to, but better than that of the mob.

Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ‘and you will cease to fear.’

Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.

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.

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.

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.

An intimate who leads a pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby; a wealthy neighbour provokes cravings in one; a companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature – what then do you imagine the effect on a person’s character is when the assault comes from the world at large?

You should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy of the many because they are unlike you.

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.

The many speak highly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand? Your merits should not be outward facing.

‘To win true freedom you must be a slave to philosophy.

What fortune has made yours is not your own.

Once it starts looking outside itself for any part of itself it is on the way to being dominated by fortune.

‘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.’

Lucilius, start following these men’s practice and appoint certain days on which to give up everything and make yourself at home with next to nothing. Start cultivating a relationship with poverty.

The same way as with fire what matters is not the fierceness of the flame but where it catches – solid objects may resist the fiercest flame while, conversely, dry and inflammable matter will nurse a mere spark into a conflagration.

And if you want to know why all this running away cannot help you, the answer is simply this: you are running away in your own company.

Wherever you look your eye will light on things that might stand out if everything around them were not of equal standard.

This is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot – the people who are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else’s shadow.