On consolation to the bereaved
99:5
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.
5.
We are ungrateful for past gains, because we hope for the future, as if the future—if so be that any future is ours—will not be quickly blended with the past.
People set a narrow limit to their enjoyments if they take pleasure only in the present; both the future and the past serve for our delight—the one with anticipation, and the other with memories but the one is contingent and may not come to pass, while the other must have been. “What madness it is, therefore, to lose our grip on that which is the surest thing of all?
Let us rest content with the pleasures we have quaffed in past days, if only, while we quaffed them, the soul was not pierced like a sieve, only to lose again whatever it had received.
Book: Moral Letters Vol III
Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.
Author: Seneca
Chapter: On consolation to the bereaved
Location: Chapter 99, Section 5
Content:
5.
We are ungrateful for past gains, because we hope for the future, as if the future—if so be that any future is ours—will not be quickly blended with the past.
People set a narrow limit to their enjoyments if they take pleasure only in the present; both the future and the past serve for our delight—the one with anticipation, and the other with memories but the one is contingent and may not come to pass, while the other must have been. “What madness it is, therefore, to lose our grip on that which is the surest thing of all?
Let us rest content with the pleasures we have quaffed in past days, if only, while we quaffed them, the soul was not pierced like a sieve, only to lose again whatever it had received.