On the fickleness of fortune
98:11
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.
11.
What resource do we find, then, in the face of these losses?
Simply this—to keep in memory the things we have lost, and not to suffer the enjoyment which we have derived from them to pass away along with them.
To have may be taken from us, to have had, never.
A man is thankless in the highest degree if, after losing something, he feels no obligation for having received it.
Chance robs us of the thing, but leaves us its use and its enjoyment—and we have lost this if we are so unfair as to regret.
Book: Moral Letters Vol III
Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.
Author: Seneca
Chapter: On the fickleness of fortune
Location: Chapter 98, Section 11
Content:
11.
What resource do we find, then, in the face of these losses?
Simply this—to keep in memory the things we have lost, and not to suffer the enjoyment which we have derived from them to pass away along with them.
To have may be taken from us, to have had, never.
A man is thankless in the highest degree if, after losing something, he feels no obligation for having received it.
Chance robs us of the thing, but leaves us its use and its enjoyment—and we have lost this if we are so unfair as to regret.