Open The Volume

Letters From a Stoic

Seneca/65 / Classical Antiquity
DeathFortuneFriendshipSelf-Command

Letters in the Stoicism tradition, oriented around death and fortune.

Seneca's Letters From a Stoic, drawn from the Moral Letters to Lucilius written near the end of his life, uses the intimacy of correspondence to turn Stoic doctrine into daily counsel. The letters range over reading, friendship, wealth, fear, death, time, and the discipline required to make philosophy a lived practice.

354 excerpts/42 sections
Open In StarfieldShuffle excerptsRead in order

Chapters

The structural skeleton of the work

Section 1

Letter II

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Focus4 excerptsReading4 excerptsFriendship2 excerptsLearning2 excerptsConsistency1 excerpt

Poverty of Desire

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man's safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another's and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already. You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.

Section 2

Letter III

6 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Friendship4 excerptsTrust4 excerptsBalance3 excerptsAction And Contemplation1 excerptActivity And Rest1 excerpt

Worthier Fault of Trust

There are certain people who tell any person they meet things that should only be confided to friends, unburdening themselves of whatever is on their minds into any ear they please. Others again are shy of confiding in their closest friends, and would not even let themselves, if they could help it, into the secrets they keep hidden deep down inside themselves. We should do neither. Trusting everyone is as much a fault as trusting no one (though I should call the first the worthier and the second the safer behaviour).

Section 3

Letter V

9 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Simplicity4 excerptsNature2 excerptsPhilosophy2 excerptsStoicism2 excerptsAnxiety1 excerpt

Conformity as Strategy

Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd. Our clothes should not be gaudy, yet they should not be dowdy either. We should not keep silver plate with inlays of solid gold, but at the same time we should not imagine that doing without gold and silver is proof that we are leading the simple life. Let our aim be a way of life not diametrically opposed to, but better than that of the mob. Otherwise we shall repel and alienate the very people whose reform we desire; we shall make them, moreover, reluctant to imitate us in anything for fear they may have to imitate us in everything.

Section 4

Letter VI

5 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Friendship3 excerptsGenerosity1 excerptJoy Of Learning1 excerptLearning By Example1 excerptMentorship1 excerpt

Joy of Teaching

You can't imagine how much of an alteration I see each day bringing about in me. “Send me, too,” you will be saying, “the things you've found so effectual.” Indeed I desire to transfer every one of them to you; part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone. If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should reject it. There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.

Section 5

Letter VII

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Balance1 excerptConformity1 excerptCrowd Psychology1 excerptCrowds And Vice1 excerptDisdain For Popularity1 excerpt

Retreat from the Crowd

When a mind is impressionable and has none too firm a hold on what is right, it must be rescued from the crowd: it is so easy for it to go over to the majority. A Socrates, a Cato or a Laelius might have been shaken in his principles by a multitude of people different from himself: such is the measure of the inability of any of us, even as we perfect our personality's adjustment, to withstand the onset of vices when they come with such a mighty following. A single example of extravagance or greed does a lot of harm – an intimate who leads a pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby; a wealthy neighbour provokes cravings in one; a companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature – what then do you imagine the effect on a person's character is when the assault comes from the world at large? You must inevitably either hate or imitate the world. But the right thing is to shun both courses: you should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy of the many because they are unlike you. Retire into yourself as much as you can.

Section 6

Letter VIII

4 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Action Vs. Inaction1 excerptCaution1 excerptContemplation1 excerptDanger Of Desire1 excerptDiscipline1 excerpt

Fortune's Hidden Snares

“Avoid,” I cry, “whatever is approved of by the mob, and things that are the gift of chance. Whenever circumstance brings some welcome thing your way, stop in suspicion and alarm: wild animals and fish alike are taken in by this or that inviting prospect. Do you look on them as presents given you by fortune? They are snares. Anyone among you who wishes to lead a secure life will do his very best to steer well wide of these baited bounties, which comprise yet another instance of the errors we miserable creatures fall into: we think these things are ours when in fact it is we who are caught. That track leads to precipices; life on that giddy level ends in a fall.

Section 7

Letter IX

16 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Friendship8 excerptsStoicism7 excerptsSelf-Sufficiency5 excerptsWisdom3 excerptsHappiness2 excerpts

Valuables Within

Asked by this man, known, from the destruction he dealt out to towns, as Demetrius the City Sacker, whether he had lost anything, he replied, “I have all my valuables with me.” There was an active and courageous man – victorious over the very victory of the enemy! “I have lost,” he said, “nothing.” He made Demetrius wonder whether he had won a victory after all. “All my possessions,” he said, “are with me”, meaning by this the qualities of a just, a good and an enlightened character, and indeed the very fact of not regarding as valuable anything that is capable of being taken away.

Section 8

Letter XI

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Moral Exemplar3 excerptsStoicism3 excerptsEthics2 excerptsHuman Nature2 excerptsLimits Of Philosophy2 excerpts

The Imagined Witness

“We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.” This, my dear Lucilius, is Epicurus' advice, and in giving it he has given us a guardian and a moral tutor – and not without reason, either: misdeeds are greatly diminished if a witness is always standing near intending doers. The personality should be provided with someone it can revere, someone whose influence can make even its private, inner life more pure.

Section 9

Letter XII

5 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Old Age2 excerptsConstraint1 excerptContentment1 excerptDeath1 excerptDesire1 excerpt

Old Age's Final Pleasures

Well, we should cherish old age and enjoy it. It is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit tastes most delicious just when its season is ending. The charms of youth are at their greatest at the time of its passing. It is the final glass which pleases the inveterate drinker, the one that sets the crowning touch on his intoxication and sends him off into oblivion. Every pleasure defers till its last its greatest delights.

Section 10

Letter XV

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Gratitude2 excerptsAging1 excerptAmbition1 excerptAnxiety1 excerptBalance1 excerpt

Independence from Fortune

“The life of folly is empty of gratitude, full of anxiety: it is focused wholly on the future.” “Who said that?” you ask. The same man as before. And what sort of life do you think is meant by “the life of folly”? Baba's and Isio's?† No, he means our own life, precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring us satisfaction – if they could ever satisfy us they would have done so by now – never thinking how pleasant it is to ask for nothing, how splendid it is to be complete and be independent of fortune.

Section 11

Letter XVI

5 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy2 excerptsStoicism2 excerptsDesire1 excerptFate1 excerptGuidance1 excerpt

Philosophy as Protector

Whichever of these alternatives, Lucilius, is true – even if all of them are true – we still need to practise philosophy. Whether we are caught in the grasp of an inexorable law of fate, whether it is God who as lord of the universe has ordered all things, or whether the affairs of mankind are tossed and buffeted haphazardly by chance, it is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us. She will encourage us to submit to God with cheerfulness and to fortune with defiance; she will show you how to follow God and bear what chance may send you.

Section 14

Letter XXVII

4 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Pleasure2 excerptsSelf-Improvement2 excerptsEphemeral Vs Enduring1 excerptFolly1 excerptHappiness1 excerpt

Enduring Inner Good

Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear – they do one harm after they're past and gone, not merely when they're in prospect. Even when they're over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime, even if it's undetected at the time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable; even if they don't do one any harm, they're fleeting in character. Look around for some enduring good instead. And nothing answers this description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself.

Section 15

Letter XXVIII

6 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Inner Peace3 excerptsSelf-Knowledge3 excerptsTravel3 excerptsContentment1 excerptDealing With Obstacles1 excerpt

Self Cannot Be Escaped

Though you cross the boundless ocean, though, to use the words of our poet Virgil, Lands and towns are left astern,* whatever your destination you will be followed by your failings. Here is what Socrates said to someone who was making the same complaint: “How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.”

Section 16

Letter XXXIII

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy2 excerptsStoicism2 excerptsArt1 excerptAuthority1 excerptBeauty1 excerpt

Own Your Words

It is disgraceful that a man who is old or in sight of old age should have a wisdom deriving solely from his notebook. “Zeno said this.” And what have you said? “Cleanthes said that.” What have you said? How much longer are you going to serve under others' orders? Assume authority yourself and utter something that may be handed down to posterity. Produce something from your own resources.

Section 17

Letter XXXVIII

2 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy2 excerptsCommunication1 excerptEducation1 excerptGrowth1 excerptTeaching1 excerpt

Words as Seeds

What is required is not a lot of words but effectual ones. Words need to be sown like seed. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when it lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size. Reason does the same; to the outward eye its dimensions may be insignificant, but with activity it starts developing. Although the words spoken are few, if the mind has taken them in as it should they gather strength and shoot upwards. Yes, precepts have the same features as seeds: they are of compact dimensions and they produce impressive results – given, as I say, the right sort of mind, to grasp at and assimilate them.

Section 18

Letter XL

4 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy3 excerptsControl1 excerptDignity1 excerptFriendship1 excerptLetters1 excerpt

Letters as Presence

I never get a letter from you without instantly feeling we're together. If pictures of absent friends are a source of pleasure to us, refreshing the memory and relieving the sense of void with a solace however insubstantial and unreal, how much more so are letters, which carry marks and signs of the absent friend that are real. For the handwriting of a friend affords us what is so delightful about seeing him again, the sense of recognition.

Section 19

Letter XLI

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Virtue3 excerptsDivinity2 excerptsNature2 excerptsReason2 excerptsConformity1 excerpt

God Within

There is no need to raise our hands to heaven; there is no need to implore the temple warden to allow us close to the ear of some graven image, as though this increased the chances of our being heard. God is near you, is with you, is inside you. Yes, Lucilius, there resides within us a divine spirit, which guards us and watches us in the evil and the good we do.

Section 20

Letter XLVI

0 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Theme clustering will appear here as excerpt coverage grows.

Representative excerpt

This section is structurally available even though excerpts are not attached to it yet.

Section 21

Letter XLVII

11 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Slavery5 excerptsStoicism3 excerptsHumility2 excerptsCharacter1 excerptCommon Humanity1 excerpt

Universal Slavery

Show me a man who isn't a slave; one is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear. I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his “little old woman”, a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service. I could show you some highly aristocratic young men who are utter slaves to stage artistes. And there's no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.

Section 22

Letter XLVIII

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Simplicity3 excerptsCompassion2 excerptsAction1 excerptAspiration1 excerptCommunity1 excerpt

Torch of Truth

All mankind are stretching out their hands to you on every side. Lives that have been ruined, lives that are on the way to ruin are appealing for some help; it is to you that they look for hope and assistance. They are begging you to extricate them from this awful vortex, to show them in their doubt and disarray the shining torch of truth. Tell them what nature has made necessary and what she has made superfluous. Tell them how simple are the laws she has laid down, and how straightforward and enjoyable life is for those who follow them and how confused and disagreeable it is for others who put more trust in popular ideas than they do in nature.

Section 23

Letter LIII

5 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy3 excerptsSelf-Knowledge2 excerptsWisdom2 excerptsAuthority1 excerptAwakening1 excerpt

Spirit's Hidden Sickness

As soon as I'd settled my stomach (for stomachs, as you know, aren't clear of seasickness the moment they're clear of the sea) and rubbed myself over with embrocation to put some life back into my body, I began to reflect how we are attended by an appalling forgetfulness of our weaknesses, even the physical ones which are continually bringing themselves to our notice, and much more so with those that are not only more serious but correspondingly less apparent. A slight feverishness may deceive a person, but when it has developed to the point where a genuine fever is raging it will extract an admission that something is wrong from even a tough and hardened individual. Suppose our feet ache, with little needling pains in the joints: at this stage we pass it off and say we've sprained an ankle or strained something in some exercise or other; while the disorder is in its indeterminate, commencing phase, its name eludes us, but once it starts bending the feet in just the way an ankle-rack does and makes them both misshapen, we have to confess that we've got the gout. With afflictions of the spirit, though, the opposite is the case: the worse a person is, the less he feels it. You needn't feel surprised, my dearest Lucilius; a person sleeping lightly perceives impressions in his dreams and is sometimes, even, aware during sleep that he is asleep, whereas a heavy slumber blots out even dreams and plunges the mind too deep for consciousness of self. Why does no one admit his failings?

Section 24

Letter LIV

4 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Death4 excerptsStoicism2 excerptsAnalogy1 excerptCourage1 excerptMortality1 excerpt

Willing What Necessity

The man, though, whom you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die. For where's the virtue in going out when you're really being thrown out? And yet there is this virtue about my case: I'm in the process of being thrown out, certainly, but the manner of it is as if I were going out. And the reason why it never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly. He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.

Section 25

Letter LV

3 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Stoicism2 excerptsFriendship1 excerptImagination1 excerptInner Peace1 excerptLiving For Oneself1 excerpt

True vs False Retreat

But philosophy, my dear Lucilius, is such a holy thing and inspires so much respect, that even something that resembles it has a specious appeal. Let a man retire and the common crowd will think of him as leading a life apart, free of all cares, self-contented, living for himself, when in fact not one of these blessings can be won by anyone other than the philosopher. He alone knows how to live for himself: he is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing, how to live. The person who has run away from the world and his fellow-men, whose exile is due to the unsuccessful outcome of his own desires, who is unable to endure the sight of others more fortunate, who has taken to some place of hiding in his alarm like a timid, inert animal, he is not “living for himself”, but for his belly and his sleep and his passions – in utter degradation, in other words. The fact that a person is living for nobody does not automatically mean that he is living for himself. Still, a persevering steadfastness of purpose counts for a lot, so that even inertia if stubbornly maintained may carry a certain weight.

Section 26

Letter LVI

6 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Activity2 excerptsIdleness2 excerptsInner Peace2 excerptsStoicism2 excerptsDiscipline1 excerpt

Inner Fortress

But by now I have so steeled myself against all these things that I can even put up with a coxswain's strident tones as he gives his oarsmen the rhythm. For I force my mind to become self-absorbed and not let outside things distract it. There can be absolute bedlam without so long as there is no commotion within, so long as fear and desire are not at loggerheads, so long as meanness and extravagance are not at odds and harassing each other.

Section 27

Letter LXIII

11 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Grief7 excerptsFriendship4 excerptsTime3 excerptsMemory2 excerptsMortality2 excerpts

Grief as Performance

Would you like to know what lies behind extravagant weeping and wailing? In our tears we are trying to find means of proving that we feel the loss. We are not being governed by our grief but parading it. No one ever goes into mourning for the benefit merely of himself. Oh, the miserable folly of it all – that there should be an element of ostentation in grief!

Section 28

Letter LXV

10 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy3 excerptsStoicism3 excerptsCausality2 excerptsFreedom2 excerptsGod2 excerpts

Soul's Undivided Authority

I am too great, was born to too great a destiny to be my body's slave. So far as I am concerned that body is nothing more or less than a fetter on my freedom. I place it squarely in the path of fortune, letting her expend her onslaught on it, not allowing any blow to get through it to my actual self. For that body is all that is vulnerable about me: within this dwelling so liable to injury there lives a spirit that is free. Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never shall it drive me to any pretence unworthy of a good man; never shall I tell a lie out of consideration for this petty body. I shall dissolve our partnership when this seems the proper course, and even now while we are bound one to the other the partnership will not be on equal terms: the soul will assume undivided authority.

Section 30

Letter LXXVIII

21 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Stoicism11 excerptsEndurance4 excerptsDeath3 excerptsIllness3 excerptsPain3 excerpts

Thinking Shapes Pain

Provided that one's thinking has not been adding anything to it, pain is a trivial sort of thing. If by contrast you start giving yourself encouragement, saying to yourself, “It's nothing – or nothing much, anyway – let's stick it out, it'll be over presently”, then in thinking it a trivial matter you will be ensuring that it actually is. Everything hangs on one's thinking. The love of power or money or luxurious living are not the only things which are guided by popular thinking. We take our cue from people's thinking even in the way we feel pain. A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

Section 31

Letter LXXXIII

4 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Drunkenness2 excerptsVice2 excerptsCharacter1 excerptInhibition1 excerptMoral Education1 excerpt

Daily Self-Audit

I shall do as you say, then, and gladly give you a record of what I do and in what order. I shall put myself under observation straight away and undertake a review of my day – a course which is of the utmost benefit. What really ruins our characters is the fact that none of us looks back over his life. We think about what we are going to do, and only rarely of that, and fail to think about what we have done, yet any plans for the future are dependent on the past.

Section 33

Letter LXXXVIII

23 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Virtue5 excerptsWisdom5 excerptsEducation4 excerptsLiberal Studies4 excerptsLearning3 excerpts

Wisdom Alone Frees

Why “liberal studies” are so called is obvious: it is because they are the ones considered worthy of a free man.* But there is really only one liberal study that deserves the name – because it makes a person free – and that is the pursuit of wisdom. Its high ideals, its steadfastness and spirit make all other studies puerile and puny in comparison.

Section 34

Letter XC

21 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Nature6 excerptsSimplicity6 excerptsWisdom6 excerptsHappiness3 excerptsLuxury3 excerpts

Self-Earned Wisdom

WHO can doubt, my dear Lucilius, that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy? A corollary of this would be the certain conclusion that our debt to philosophy is greater than the debt we owe to the gods (by just so much as a good life is more of a blessing than, simply, life) had it not been for the fact that philosophy itself was something bestowed by the gods. They have given no one the present of a knowledge of philosophy, but everyone the means of acquiring it. For if they had made philosophy a blessing given to all and sundry, if we were born in a state of moral enlightenment, wisdom would have been deprived of the best thing about her – that she isn't one of the things which fortune either gives us or doesn't As things are, there is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.

Section 35

Letter XCI

13 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Stoicism6 excerptsFate3 excerptsFortune2 excerptsImpermanence2 excerptsMortality2 excerpts

Summer's Sudden Storm

No moment is exempt: in the midst of pleasures there are found the springs of suffering. In the middle of peace war rears its head, and the bulwarks of one's security are transformed into sources of alarm, friend turning foe and ally turning enemy. The summer's calm is upset by sudden storms more severe than those of winter. In the absence of any enemy we suffer all that an enemy might wreak on us.

Section 36

Letter CIV

16 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Stoicism4 excerptsFear3 excerptsPerception3 excerptsTravel3 excerptsCourage2 excerpts

Escape Requires New Self

This is not something, however, to which mere surroundings are conducive, unless the mind is at its own disposal, able at will to provide its own seclusion even in crowded moments. On the contrary, the man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet, will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing. The story is told that someone complained to Socrates that travelling abroad had never done him any good and received the reply: “What else can you expect, seeing that you always take yourself along with you when you go abroad?” What a blessing it would be for some people if they could only lose themselves ! As things are these persons are a worry and a burden, a source of demoralization and anxiety, to their own selves. What good does it do you to go overseas, to move from city to city? If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.

Section 37

Letter CV

5 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Human Nature2 excerptsPeace Of Mind2 excerptsConflict1 excerptConscience1 excerptContempt1 excerpt

Silence as Fortress

But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard on his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will be the creator of a host of later listeners – such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumour.

Section 38

Letter CVII

7 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Stoicism3 excerptsAcceptance2 excerptsFate2 excerptsPreparation For Adversity2 excerptsResilience2 excerpts

Opposites Sustain Eternity

These are conditions of our existence which we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit, such a spirit as befits a good man, so that we may bear up bravely under all that fortune sends us and bring our wills into tune with nature's; reversals, after all, are the means by which nature regulates this visible realm of hers: clear skies follow cloudy; after the calm comes the storm; the winds take turns to blow; day succeeds night; while part of the heavens is in the ascendant, another is sinking. It is by means of opposites that eternity endures.

Section 39

Letter CVIII

20 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Philosophy4 excerptsStoicism4 excerptsTruth3 excerptsCarpe Diem2 excerptsEducation2 excerpts

Virtue's Slumbering Seeds

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.

Section 40

Letter CXIV

11 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Character And Style2 excerptsFaults2 excerptsLiterary Criticism2 excerptsStyle2 excerptsComposition1 excerpt

Speech as Moral Mirror

The answer lies in something that you hear commonly enough, something which among the Greeks has passed into a proverb: people's speech matches their lives. And just as the way in which each individual expresses himself resembles the way he acts, so in the case of a nation of declining morals and given over to luxury forms of expression at any given time mirror the general behaviour of that society. A luxuriant literary style, assuming that it is the favoured and accepted style and not just appearing in the odd writer here and there, is a sign of an extravagant society. The spirit and the intellect cannot be of different hues. If the spirit is sound, if it is properly adjusted and has dignity and self-control, the intellect will be sober and sensible too, and if the former is tainted the latter will be infected as well.

Section 41

Letter CXXII

10 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Nature4 excerptsDecadence2 excerptsExtravagance2 excerptsVice2 excerptsAction1 excerpt

Virtue's Simplicity vs Vice's Complexity

You needn't be surprised to discover so much individuality where the vices are concerned. Vices are manifold, take countless different forms and are incapable of classification. Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits of infinite variations. It is the same with people's characters; in those who follow nature they are straightforward and uncomplicated, and differ only in minor degree, while those that are warped are hopelessly at odds with the rest and equally at odds with themselves.