86Thousand400: Seneca, Philosophy continued

It's not because they're hard that we lose confidence: they're hard because we lack the confidence

And then we need to look down on wealth, which is the wage of slavery. Gold and silver and everything else that clutters our prosperous homes should be discarded. Freedom cannot be won without sacrifice. If you set a high value on her, everything else must be valued a little.

A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it

We musn't take on more than we can manage. You shouldn't attempt to absorb all you want to - just what you've room for; simply adopt the right approach and you will end up with room for all you want. The more the mind takes in the more it expands.

A person who goes to a philospher should carry away with him something or other of value everyday; he should return home a sounder man or at least more capable of becoming one. And he will; for the power of philosophy is such that she helps not only those who devote themselves to her but also those who come into contact with her. A person going out into the sun, whether or not this is what he is going out for, will acquire a tan. Customers who sit around too long in a shop selling perfumes carry the scent of the place away with them. And people who have been with a philosopher are bound to have derived from it something of benefit even to the inattentive.

It is easy enough to arouse in a listener a desire for what is honourable; for in every one of us nature has laid the foundations or sown the seeds of the virtues. We are born to them all, all of us, and when a person comes along with the necessary stimulus, then those qualities of the personality are awakened, so to speak from their slumber. Haven't you noticed how the theatre murmurs agreement whenever something is spoken the truth of which we generally recognize and unanimously confirm?

The poor lack much, the greedy everything. The greedy man does no one any good, but harms no person more than his own self

The listener is told at very considerable length that men should look on riches as consisting in the spirit and not in inherited estates, and that a man is wealthy if he has attuned himself to his restricted means and has made himself rich on little. But verses such as the following he finds a good deal more striking. He needs but little who desires but little. He has his wish, whose wish can be to have what is enough

The best parts of life are flitting by, the worse are to come. The wine which is poured out first is the purest wine in the bottle, the heaviest particles and any cloudiness settling to the bottom. It is just the same with human life. The best comes first. Are we going to let others drain it so as to keep the dregs for ourselves? Let that sentence stick in your mind, accepted as unquestionably as if it had been uttered by an oracle.