Back to On the intimations of our immortality

Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 23

On the intimations of our immortality

102:23

Book Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.

Book Description: The final volume of Seneca's moral letters. Common Stoic themes emerge again and again: the unreliability of fortune, the ability to form Stoic resolve, and the importance of virtue.

23.

These delays of mortal existence are a prelude to the longer and better life.

As the mother’s womb holds us for ten months, making us ready, not for the womb itself, but for the existence into which we seem to be sent forth when at last we are fitted to draw breath and live in the open; just so, throughout the years extending between infancy and old age, we are making ourselves ready for another birth.

A different beginning, a different condition, await us.