On nature as our best provider
119:14
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.
14.
Hunger is not ambitious; it is quite satisfied to come to an end; nor does it care very much what food brings it to an end.
Those things are but the instruments of a luxury which is not “happiness”; a luxury which seeks how it may prolong hunger even after repletion, how to stuff the stomach, not to fill it, and how to rouse a thirst that has been satisfied with the first drink.
Horace’s words are therefore most excellent when he says that it makes no difference to one’s thirst in what costly goblet, or with what elaborate state, the water is served.
For if you believe it to be of importance how curly-haired your slave is, or how transparent is the cup which he offers you, you are not thirsty.
Book: Moral Letters Vol III
Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.
Author: Seneca
Chapter: On nature as our best provider
Location: Chapter 119, Section 14
Content:
14.
Hunger is not ambitious; it is quite satisfied to come to an end; nor does it care very much what food brings it to an end.
Those things are but the instruments of a luxury which is not “happiness”; a luxury which seeks how it may prolong hunger even after repletion, how to stuff the stomach, not to fill it, and how to rouse a thirst that has been satisfied with the first drink.
Horace’s words are therefore most excellent when he says that it makes no difference to one’s thirst in what costly goblet, or with what elaborate state, the water is served.
For if you believe it to be of importance how curly-haired your slave is, or how transparent is the cup which he offers you, you are not thirsty.