From Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius, written in the last years of his life, in R. M. Gummere’s translation. Numbers are letter and section.
“… hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.”Letters to Lucilius 1.2
Today is the only time you can use.
“Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time.”Letters to Lucilius 1.3
Time is the one thing truly yours: spend it deliberately.
“Everywhere means nowhere.”Letters to Lucilius 2.2
Depth needs staying put.
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”Letters to Lucilius 2.6
Poverty is wanting, not lacking.
“Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.”Letters to Lucilius 7.8
Choose your company; it shapes you.
“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”Letters to Lucilius 13.4
Most fears never arrive.
“You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.”Letters to Lucilius 28.1
You take yourself wherever you go.
“Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies.”Letters to Lucilius 47.10
Every human being shares your nature.
“Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail.”Letters to Lucilius 63.1
Grief is human; drowning in it is not required.
“Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us.”Letters to Lucilius 63.4
Turn loss into gratitude.
“I feel, my dear Lucilius, that I am being not only reformed, but transformed.”Letters to Lucilius 6.1
Real study changes the person, not just their opinions.
“Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.”Letters to Lucilius 5.7, quoting the Stoic Hecato
Hope and fear are chained together, and both pull you out of the present.
“If you would be loved, love.”Letters to Lucilius 9.6, quoting Hecato
Affection is earned by giving it first.
“Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show. It is a matter, not of words, but of facts.”Letters to Lucilius 16.3
Philosophy is measured by how you live, not by how you talk.
“When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”Letters to Lucilius 71.3
Choose a direction, and circumstances start to help.
These circulate widely under the same name, but don’t hold up:
More famous misquotes: Quotes They Never Said
Seneca’s life and ideas · Stoicism · The letters on Wikisource
Moral Letters to Lucilius (Wikisource) · Seneca · Procrastination
