This is a modern take on Seneca's Moral Letters to Lucilius. I use them as tools in the ongoing search for what it means to live a good life. Although Seneca's words have been mined for centuries, each generation keeps turning up gemstones. I seek to polish old stones to show them in a new light.
Moral Letters
Though we travel to the ends of the earth, we cannot outrun ourselves. Rather than looking to travel in more luxury and greater style, we should sit still with ourselves and consider whether we are running to something or running away from it.
Moral Letters
To retire from work life does not mean you have retired from your worries. To take the one step without taking the other is to change places but not position.
Moral Letters
We assume the prominent are thrilled with their privileges, and made content thereby. But what do we know of their inner thoughts, their joys and their worries?
Moral Letters
You do not need what you think you need to be happy, because all you need is within you.
Moral Letters
There is not one of us who could not be carried off today. What does it say if you cannot say you are living today, but only preparing for a tomorrow that may never come?
Moral Letters
Awkwardness, thy name is Smalltalk! And to know that I will inflict myself on an unwitting dinner table with my unwitty remarks makes me wish most fervently to return to my hermit’s cave.
Moral Letters
Those who see much while believing they know little are much rarer and more valuable than those who believe they know much and consequently see little.
Moral Letters
For those who are training their minds, solitude may be the best way to avoid early unwelcome tests. If you do not wish to be tempted, do not wander blithely through the bazaar of modern desires.
Moral Letters
Many people are the architects of their own misery, never realizing that with similar effort and much less worry they could just as easily be about the building of a personal paradise.
Moral Letters
Now I am aged myself, though I did not note time’s magic as it worked upon me. I woke up one day to see some potion had taken its effect, and wizened my face before I’ve managed to bring wisdom to my eyes.
Moral Letters
People spend their time in want and worry, and their earnest efforts are destined to futility because they are working towards ends that can never make them happy. They want possessions, promotions, and power, and worry that what they have obtained will be taken from them.
Moral Letters
It betrays real cruelty to knowingly treat another as beneath you simply because they serve you. But to do so out of ignorance of their inherent worth is an even worse offense to your own worth.