Moral Letters to Lucilius

​The notebooks which you desire, carefully arranged and compressed into a small space, I will indeed compile. But consider whether the ordinary method may not be of more benefit than this which is now commonly called an “abridgement,” and which was formerly, when Latin was spoken correctly, called a “summary.” The former is more necessary for the learner, the latter for the knower. For the former teaches, while the latter reminds. But I will make both available to you. There is no reason for you to demand this or that person from me; he who provides a sponsor is himself unknown.

​I will therefore write what you wish, but in my own way; in the meantime, you have many whose writings I do not know if they arrange sufficiently. Take into your hands the list of philosophers; this very thing will compel you to wake up, if you see how many have labored for you. You will also desire to be one of them yourself. For a noble mind has this excellent quality in itself, that it is spurred on to honorable things. No man of exalted genius is pleased by low and sordid things; the appearance of great things summons him to itself and uplifts him.

​Just as a flame rises straight up and cannot lie flat or be kept down, any more than it can remain still; so our mind is always in motion, being all the more mobile and active, the more vehement it is. But happy is he who has given this impulse to better things! He will place himself outside the jurisdiction and dominion of fortune. He will moderate prosperity, shatter adversity, and look down upon things that others admire.

​It is the mark of a great mind to despise great things and to prefer moderate things to excessive ones. For the former are useful and vital; but the latter, by the very fact that they overflow, do harm. Thus excessive richness lays low the crop, thus branches are broken by an excessive load, thus excessive fruitfulness does not reach maturity. The same thing happens also to minds, which immoderate good fortune ruins, which they use not only to the injury of others but also to their own.

​What enemy was ever so abusive to anyone as their own pleasures are to some people? For whose lack of control and mad lust you might forgive for this one reason, that they suffer what they have done. Nor does this madness harass them without cause; for it is necessary that desire, which leaps over its natural limit, should go on to infinity. For the former has its own limit, but empty things and those born of caprice are without end.

​Utility measures the necessary; where do you limit the superfluous? Therefore they submerge themselves in pleasures, which they cannot do without once they have been turned into a habit, and they are most miserable for this reason, that they have reached the point where what had been superfluous has become necessary to them. Thus they serve their pleasures, rather than enjoy them, and they even love their own evils, which is the ultimate stage of evils. But then infelicity is consummated, when shameful things not only delight but also please, and there ceases to be room for a remedy when what had been vices are now custom. FAREWELL.