Every pleasure saves its greatest delights for its last moments. The most pleasurable time of life is on the downhill side, just before the drop-off. Even the time that stands at the very brink has its own pleasures, I believe. Or if not, then it has this instead: One no longer feels the need of any. How sweet it is to have worn out one’s desires and left them behind.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1574.
That career of yours leads over a clif. To leave such an exhalted life, you have to fall. And once prosperity begins to push us over, we cannot even resist. We could wish to fall only once, or at least to fall from an upright position, but we are not allowed. Fortune deos not only overturn us: It upends us, and then smashes us.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1569.
Philosophy demands self-restraint, not self-abnegation—and even self-restraint can comb its hair. The limit I suggest is this: Our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion, our way of life should be one that everyone can admire without finding it unrecognizable.
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 5.5
slip:4a1564.
What nature requires is close by and easy to obtain. All that sweat is for superfluities. We wear out our fine clothes, grow old in army tents, hurl ourselves against foreign shores, and for what? Everything we need is already at hand. Anyone who is on good terms with poverty is rich.
~ Seneca, letter 4:10-11
slip:4a1559.
No one has ever reached a point where the power fortune granted was greater than the risk. The sea is calm now, but do not trust it: The storm comes in an instant. Pleasure boats that were out all morning are sunk before the day is over.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1554.
Persevere in what you have begun; hurry as much as you can, so that you will have more time to enjoy a mind that is settled and made flawless. To be sure, you will have enjoyment even as you make it so; But there is quite another pleasure to be gained from the contemplation of an intellect that is spotlessly pure and right.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1549.
[Do not disquiet] yourself by running about from place to place. Thrashing around in that way indicates a mind in poor health. In my view, the first sign of a settled mind is that it can stay in one place and spend time with itself.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1544.
I spend a lot of time reading—frankly, as much time as I can sequester for it. I’ve read several of Seneca’s letters, randomly over the years. A while back I bought this delightful edition from Chicago Press and I’m beginning at the beginning. (There are marks in the book where I’ve already used it for referring to some of the letters.) What knowledge are you putting into your mind?
ɕ
I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes life evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1516.
The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.
~ Seneca
slip:4a1371.