The Best Of Stoico Wisdom [Part-3] - Seneca

Stoicism is a philosophy set to teach people to set mind from worries about things we can't control.

It teaches to distantiate oneself from fear and anxiety by living life in the present moment.

Everyone can draw some good teaching from the Stoico, so let's head to the path of eternal wisdom.

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Long acquaintance with both good and bad people leads one to esteem them all alike.

I do not care for a bed with gorgeous hangings, nor for clothes brought out of a chest, or pressed under weights and made glossy by frequent manglings, but for common and cheap ones, that require no care either to keep them or to put them on.

For food I do not want what needs whole troops of servants to prepare it and admire it, nor what is ordered many days before and served up by many hands, but something handy and easily come at, with nothing far-fetched or costly about it, to be had in every part of the world, burdensome neither to one's fortune nor one's body.

I do not want a table that is beauteous with dappled spots, or known to all the town by the number of fashionable people to whom it has successively belonged, but one which stands merely for use, and which causes no guest's eye to dwell upon it with pleasure or to kindle at it with envy.

I think of houses too, where one treads on precious stones, and where valuables lie about in every corner, where the very roof is brilliantly painted. What shall I say of waters, transparent to the very bottom, which flow round the guests, and banquets worthy of the theatre in which they take place? Coming as I do from a long course of dull thrift, I find myself surrounded by the most brilliant luxury, which echoes around me on every side: my sight becomes a little dazzled by it: When I return from seeing it I am a sadder, I cannot walk amid my own paltry possessions with so lofty a step as before, and silently there steals over me a feeling of vexation, and a doubt whether that way of life may not be better than mine.

At one time I would obey the maxims of our school and plunge into public life, I would obtain office and become consul, not because the purple robe and lictor's axes attract me, but in order that I may be able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all my countrymen, and indeed to all mankind.

Let my mind be contained within itself and improve itself: let it take no part with other men's affairs, and do nothing which depends on the approval of others: let me enjoy a tranquility undisturbed by either public or private troubles.

Less labour is needed when one does not look beyond the present.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Nothing is ours except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.

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