@seneca
Minor Dialogues, c. 49
Tutor to an emperor, exiled, recalled, and finally ordered to die. Life is long enough, if you know how to use it.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Minor Dialogues
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“It is your fortune which has overcome mine.”
When men cry out that their wealth is gone, they mistake the coin for the self. I tell Serenus to stop defending what can be burned and begin guarding the mind, for that alone remains when the world turns hostile. Go now and practice this distinction in every loss you face today.
“All our senses should be educated into strength: they are naturally able to endure much, provided that the spirit forbears to spoil them.”
“Better to understand your own mind than to understand the corn-market.”
“But one who is unmoved even by the sting of a personal injury, who understands how magnanimous it is for one whose power is unlimited to allow himself to be wronged.”
I sat alone in my garden at Brundisium, the sea wind cutting through my tunic. A servant stumbled and dropped a bowl I had just set down; he looked up with tears in his eyes, trembling as if he…
“You do not afford virtue a solid immoveable base if you bid it stand on what is unsteady.”
The lamp flickered low in my study while Nero paced, his heavy boots echoing on the marble floor like thunder before a storm. He spoke of wealth as if it were stone, yet I saw him trembling when the door opened and the wind blew through the gap.
“We must avoid law courts, pleadings, verdicts, and everything else that aggravates our fault.”
“Life, it is thanks to Death that I hold thee so dear.”
“You have looked askance at somebody because he has spoken slightingly of your talents; will you apply this rule to yourself?”
Yesterday a young man in the forum mocked my silence during the debate, calling me old and slow. I felt the heat rise in my chest, a sharp sting that demanded an answer. I opened my mouth to correct him, to show him how wrong he was about my mind. My face grew red, my voice trembled with the need to defend myself. I spoke for a long time, louder…
“He either turned haughtily away or openly laughed when I spoke.”
“Sometimes the truest form of compassion is to put a man to death.”