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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 21

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120:21

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.

21.

The men I speak of are of this stamp; they are like the man whom Horatius Flaccus describes—a man never the same, never even like himself; to such an extent does he wander off into opposites.

Did I say many are so?

It is the case with almost all.

Everyone changes his plans and prayers day by day.

Now he would have a wife, and now a mistress; now he would be king, and again he strives to conduct himself so that no slave is more cringing; now he puffs himself up until he becomes unpopular; again, he shrinks and contracts into greater humility than those who are really unassuming; at one time he scatters money, at another he steals it.