Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Your complaining of a lack of books there. It does not matter how many you have, but how good they are; reading a specific thing is beneficial, a variety of things delights. He who wants to arrive where he has destined should follow one way, not wander through many. That is not going there, but straying.

”I should wish,” you say, “that you would give me advice rather than books.” But I indeed am ready to send whatever I have, and to shake out my entire storehouse. I would also transfer myself there, if I could; and unless I hoped that you would soon obtain the end of your duty, I would have declared this elderly expedition for myself, nor could Charybdis and Scylla and that fabulous strait have deterred me. I would have swum across those waters, not just crossed them, provided that I could embrace you and assess in person how much you had grown in mind.

​Moreover, as for your desiring my books to be sent to you, I do not think myself eloquent because of that any more than I would think myself handsome if you were to ask for my portrait. I know that this belongs to affection, not to judgment; and even if it is a matter of judgment, affection has imposed upon you.

​But whatever they are, read them in such a way as if I were still seeking the truth, not knowing it, and seeking it obstinately. For I have not sold myself to anyone, I bear no one’s name. I trust much in the judgment of great men, but I also claim something for my own. For they too left to us not things discovered, but things to be discovered; and they would perhaps have found necessary things, if they had not also sought superfluous ones.

​A quibbling of words and captious disputations, which exercise a useless sharpness, snatched much time from them. We tie knots and bind ambiguous meaning to words, and then undo them. Do we have so much free time? Do we already know how to live, how to die? We must proceed with our whole mind to that place where precautions must be taken lest things, not words, deceive us.

​Why do you distinguish for me the similarities of words, by which no one has ever been caught except while disputing? Things deceive; distinguish them. We embrace bad things instead of good; we wish for the opposite of what we wished. Our prayers fight with prayers, our plans with plans.

​How similar flattery is to friendship! It does not only imitate it, but surpasses and outruns it; it is received with open and favorable ears and descends into the inmost heart, welcome for the very reason that it harms. Teach me how I can distinguish this similarity. A flattering enemy comes to me instead of a friend. Vices creep upon us under the name of virtues, rashness lurks under the title of bravery, moderation is called laziness, the timid is accepted instead of the cautious; in these we err with great danger. Imprint on these certain marks.

​Moreover, he who is asked whether he has horns is not so foolish as to feel his forehead, nor again so silly or dull as not to know that you have persuaded him by a very subtle deduction. Thus those things deceive without harm, just as the cups and balls of jugglers, in which the deception itself delights me. Make me understand how it is done; I have lost the knack. I say the same about those catches; for by what name should I rather call sophisms? They neither harm the ignorant nor help the knowing.