Some fun quotes from Seneca:
"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. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. 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."
--Letter V
"...I'll tell you what took my fancy in the writings of Hecato today. 'What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.' That is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all."
-- Letter VI
"A further point, too, is that these people who never attain independence follow the views of their predecessors, first, in matters in which everyone else without exception has abandoned the older authority concerned, and secondly, in matters in which investigations are still not complete. But no new findings will ever be made if we rest content with the findings of the past. Besides, a man who follows someone else not only does not find anything, he is not even looking. 'But surely you are going to walk in your predecessors' footsteps?' Yes indeed, I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. The men who pioneered the old routes are leaders, not our masters. Truth lies open to everyone. There has yet to be a monopoly of truth. And there is plenty of it left for future generations too."
--Letter XXXIII
"History relates the story of the famous Spartan, a mere boy who, when he was taken prisoner, kept shouting in his native Doric, 'I shall not be a slave!' He was as good as his word. The first time he was ordered to perform a slave's task, some humiliating household job (his actual orders were to fetch a disgusting chamber pot), he dashed his head against a wall and cracked his skull open. Freedom is as near as that - is anyone really still a slave?"
"Caligula was once passing a column of captives on the Latin Road when one of them, with a hoary old beard reaching down his breast, begged to be put to death. 'So,' replied Caligula, 'you are alive, then, as you are?' That is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release. 'You are scared of dying? So you are alive, then, as you are?'"
"Why go into the question whether or not Penelope completely took in her contemporaries and was far from being a model of wifely purity, any more than the question whether or not she had a feeling that the man she was looking at was Ulysses before she actually knew it? Teach me instead what purity is, how much value there is in it, whether it lies in the body or in the mind. Turning to the musical scholar I say this. You teach me how bass and treble harmonize, or how strings producing different notes can give rise to concord. I would rather you brought about some harmony in my mind and got my thoughts into tune. You show me which are the plaintive keys. I would rather you showed me how to avoid uttering plaintive notes when things go against me in life.
The geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates - rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough. He teaches me to calculate, putting my fingers into the service of avarice, instead of teaching me that there is no point whatsoever in that sort of computation and that a person is none the happier for having properties which tire accountants out, or to put it another way, how superfluous a man's possessions are when he would be a picture of misery if you forced him to start counting up single-handed how much he possessed. What use is it to me to be able to divide a piece of land into equal areas if I'm unable to divide it with a brother? What use is the ability to measure out a portion of an acre with an accuracy extending even to the bits which elude the measuring rod if I'm upset when some high-handed neighbour encroaches slightly on my property? The geometrician teaches me how I may avoid losing any fraction of my estates, but what I really want to learn is how to lose the lot and still keep smiling."
"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 for him if he had merely read so many useless works. In these works he discusses such questions as Homer's origin, who was Aeneas' real mother, whether Anacreon's manner of life was more that of a lecher or that of a drunkard, whether Sappho slept with anyone who asked her, and other things that would be better unlearned if one actually knew them! Don't you go and tell me now that life is long enough for this sort of thing!"
"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. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. 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."
--Letter V
"...I'll tell you what took my fancy in the writings of Hecato today. 'What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.' That is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all."
-- Letter VI
"A further point, too, is that these people who never attain independence follow the views of their predecessors, first, in matters in which everyone else without exception has abandoned the older authority concerned, and secondly, in matters in which investigations are still not complete. But no new findings will ever be made if we rest content with the findings of the past. Besides, a man who follows someone else not only does not find anything, he is not even looking. 'But surely you are going to walk in your predecessors' footsteps?' Yes indeed, I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. The men who pioneered the old routes are leaders, not our masters. Truth lies open to everyone. There has yet to be a monopoly of truth. And there is plenty of it left for future generations too."
--Letter XXXIII
"History relates the story of the famous Spartan, a mere boy who, when he was taken prisoner, kept shouting in his native Doric, 'I shall not be a slave!' He was as good as his word. The first time he was ordered to perform a slave's task, some humiliating household job (his actual orders were to fetch a disgusting chamber pot), he dashed his head against a wall and cracked his skull open. Freedom is as near as that - is anyone really still a slave?"
"Caligula was once passing a column of captives on the Latin Road when one of them, with a hoary old beard reaching down his breast, begged to be put to death. 'So,' replied Caligula, 'you are alive, then, as you are?' That is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release. 'You are scared of dying? So you are alive, then, as you are?'"
"Why go into the question whether or not Penelope completely took in her contemporaries and was far from being a model of wifely purity, any more than the question whether or not she had a feeling that the man she was looking at was Ulysses before she actually knew it? Teach me instead what purity is, how much value there is in it, whether it lies in the body or in the mind. Turning to the musical scholar I say this. You teach me how bass and treble harmonize, or how strings producing different notes can give rise to concord. I would rather you brought about some harmony in my mind and got my thoughts into tune. You show me which are the plaintive keys. I would rather you showed me how to avoid uttering plaintive notes when things go against me in life.
The geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates - rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough. He teaches me to calculate, putting my fingers into the service of avarice, instead of teaching me that there is no point whatsoever in that sort of computation and that a person is none the happier for having properties which tire accountants out, or to put it another way, how superfluous a man's possessions are when he would be a picture of misery if you forced him to start counting up single-handed how much he possessed. What use is it to me to be able to divide a piece of land into equal areas if I'm unable to divide it with a brother? What use is the ability to measure out a portion of an acre with an accuracy extending even to the bits which elude the measuring rod if I'm upset when some high-handed neighbour encroaches slightly on my property? The geometrician teaches me how I may avoid losing any fraction of my estates, but what I really want to learn is how to lose the lot and still keep smiling."
"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 for him if he had merely read so many useless works. In these works he discusses such questions as Homer's origin, who was Aeneas' real mother, whether Anacreon's manner of life was more that of a lecher or that of a drunkard, whether Sappho slept with anyone who asked her, and other things that would be better unlearned if one actually knew them! Don't you go and tell me now that life is long enough for this sort of thing!"