Letters to Lucilius (Seneca)
124 Stoic letters that supply much of the West's stock of practical moral quotation.
The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium are 124 letters written by Seneca the Younger in the last years of his life, addressed to his friend Lucilius. Each takes a practical difficulty — grief, crowds, illness, time, money — and works it toward a Stoic conclusion.
Seneca writes in short, closable sentences, a style Roman critics found fragmentary and modern readers find eminently quotable. The letters are consequently a primary source for the Stoic revival in contemporary self-help writing.
Citation is by letter and section: Ep. 1.2, Ep. 49.3. Seneca also quotes Epicurus constantly and approvingly, which is a frequent source of misattribution — a line inside a Seneca letter may be Epicurus's, and Seneca usually says so.
Common mistake: quoting Seneca's sharpest lines about wealth without noting that he was among the richest men in Rome. Readers who know the biography will supply the objection, so it is better to acknowledge it.
“"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."”
Keep reading the glossary
Marcus Aurelius's private notebook, written for himself and quoted by everyone else.
A short Stoic handbook of practical maxims, compiled by a student from Epictetus' lectures.
A 2,000-year-old practice of distilling ethical instruction into short, repeatable lines.
A short, weighty statement of general truth used to close or crown a passage of argument.