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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 20

On true and false riches

110:20

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.

20.

Your very porridge and water can fall under another’s jurisdiction; and besides, freedom comes, not to him over whom Fortune has slight power, but to him over whom she has no power at all.

This is what I mean: you must crave nothing, if you would vie with Jupiter; for Jupiter craves nothing.” This is what Attalus told us.

If you are willing to think often of these things, you will strive not to seem happy, but to be happy, and, in addition, to seem happy to yourself rather than to others.

Farewell.