October 7, 2020
Five Life-Changing Quotes from Seneca | The Daily Stoic
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Key Takeaways
- “No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it with.” – Seneca
- We torture ourselves more than the thing we are worrying about ever could.
- Seneca talks about the importance of adversity, not only embracing it, but actively seeking it out so you can be better, stronger, and more prepared.
- “Just as some diseases jump over onto those we have touched, so the mind infects those closest to us with evils.” -– Seneca
Intro
- Ryan Holiday (@ryanholiday) is the author of many bestselling books, including The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and Stillness is the Key
Seneca’s Background
- “Would you really know what Philosophy offers humanity; Philosophy offers counsel.” – Seneca
- Born at the turn of the first millennium, during a time of paranoia, violence, and political turmoil, Seneca sought counsel, just as we all need counsel
- Read widely and studied and discovered the school of Stoicism, which was founded only a few centuries before him
- He found what he was looking for in Stoicism: guidance towards how to live a good life
- “No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it with.” – Seneca
Approach to Five Quotes
- The purpose of these quotes is not to simply pick apart the text and analyze it, looking for a more practical approach
- “We look at the words so they can be translated into works.” – Seneca
- Ryan is unbiased in saying Seneca did not always live up to everything he read and wrote, but genuinely tried and did it much better than most
Quote #1: “There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us… we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
- Seneca’s life was full of suffering:
- Born with chronic lung condition, exiled twice, lived through first five emperors (who were increasingly more deranged)
- We torture ourselves in imagination more than the thing we are worrying about ever could
- Pain is inevitable, we must avoid the phantom premonitions of what may or may not happen
- Stay in the present, stay in reality
Quote #2: “Excellence withers without an adversary; as fire is the test for gold, so adversity is the test of strong men.”
- We like to live comfortably, to minimize inconvenience, and to only seek out enjoyable tasks
- Seneca said this is a kind of “deathtrap”
- “A person who has never been challenged is a tragic figure… you pass through life without anyone knowing what you are capable of, even yourself.” – Seneca
- Seneca talks about the importance of adversity, not only embracing it, but actively seeking it out so you can be better, stronger, and more prepared
- This mindset grants to push us rather than help us atrophy
- When we go through challenges, we should be grateful for the challenge it presents and demonstrates our full potential
- This mindset grants to push us rather than help us atrophy
Quote #3: “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 as they teach.”
- Jim Rohn’s widely quoted line: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
- James Altucher advises young writers and entrepreneurs to find their scene, who pushes them to be better
- Goethe’s maxim is better – “Tell me whom you consort with, and I will tell you who you are”
- “If there is one thing I am careful of it is who we surround ourselves with… I never bring home the same character that I took with me. There is no person who doesn’t unconsciously stamp themselves on us.” – Seneca
- We cannot be afraid to reach out to new people and make new friends
- “Just as some diseases jump over onto those we have touched, so the mind infects those closest to us with evils.” – Seneca
Quote #4: “Anger always outlasts hurt, best to take the opposite course… would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?”
- There are a lot of destructive beliefs out there, one of the most dangerous is that anger is fuel
- Seen and said by athletes, professionals claim it fuels them to triumph
- Anger destroys everything in its vicinity
- Seneca claimed that anger is the ugliest and most savage of all emotions, no other plague has done more damage to humankind
- Nothing great was truly fueled by anger, and if it was, then it is not truly great
- “The foundation of greatness is strength and goodness.” – Seneca
Quote “5: “This is our big mistake, to think we look forward to death; most of death is already gone, whatever time has passed is owned by death”
- Death was a common theme in Seneca’s writings
- Balance the books of life each day
- Death isn’t something that lay ahead of us, in the uncertain future, he realized we are dying everyday
- “No day, no minute, no second once dead can be revived.” – Seneca
- We waste a lot of time and our lives, the only path is to live immediately and fully
- Go out and live now while you still can, do not wait, take it now and live.
Additional Notes
- Ryan says that studying Seneca is endlessly complicated, his ambition is relatable, and is stoic purity is admirable
- Ryan’s new book, Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, details biographies of 26 stoics over the past 23 centuries for the first time
