Inspirational Quotes from Letters from a Stoic
Emerson instructed us to “Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of truimpth out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.”
Following Emerson’s guidance, I offer some of my favorite blasts of triumph. These quotes I draw from Letters from a Stoic by Seneca.
PhilosophersNotes on Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
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A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation…you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.
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A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.
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A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
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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.
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Away with the world's opinion of you—it's always unsettled and divided.
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Be harsh with yourself at times.
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"Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to 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. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock."
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"Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it—the fear of it."
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Drunkenness is nothing but a self-induced state of insanity.
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Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.
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Every journey has an end.
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Everything hangs on one's thinking.
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For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.
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God is near you, is with you, is inside you.
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How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?
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How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.
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How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well.
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I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.
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If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich.
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Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.
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Let us fight the battle—retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.
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Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.
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Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy—that he live in accordance with his own nature.
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No one should feel pride in anything that is not his own.
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Philosophy is good advice, and no one gives good advice at the top of his lungs.
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Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness…she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.
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Philosophy's power to blunt all the blows of circumstance is beyond belief.
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"Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear."
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Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.
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Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.
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See what daily exercise does for one.
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Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel…You are called in to help the unhappy.
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So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
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Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.
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"The philosopher: he alone knows how to live for himself. He is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing: how to live."
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"The place one's in, though, doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind: it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself."
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The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.
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The wise man then followed a simple way of life—which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.
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The wise man…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 lacks everything.
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The worse a person is the less he feels it.
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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.
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There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
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To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
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To govern was to serve, not to rule.
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To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.
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We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts—which someone can!
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What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?
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What is required is not a lot words, but effectual ones.
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What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?
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What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.
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When one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation.
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When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that he hadn't come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.' Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: It's not my intention to accept whatever time is leftover from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.' Give your whole mind to her.
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You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.
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You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.
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You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.
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You want to live—but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying—and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?
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Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Big Ideas from Letters from a Stoic
“Big Ideas” are simply the gems I’ve pulled out of my favorite books/seminars/life lessons. These ones I pulled from Letters from a Stoic
- Seneca: Daily Retirement
- Seneca: Do You Like Yourself?
- Seneca: Creating A Disposition to Good
- Seneca: Focus
- Seneca: Hello, God!
- Seneca: Your Ideal State
- Seneca: The Troubled Ones
- Seneca: The Philosopher’s Power
- Seneca: A Path to Salvation
- Seneca: On Death
- Seneca: The Play of Life
- Seneca: Pleasures and Punishments
- Seneca: Harshness Properly Employed
- Seneca: Dare Ya!
Brian Johnson
Brian Johnson loves wisdom. That makes him a Philosopher. He also loves inspiring and empowering peeps to rock their greatest lives. That’s why he created PhilosophersNotes.
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