Seneca
Roman Stoic philosopher
An AI built from 10 public sources about Seneca's work. It is not Seneca and is not endorsed by them.
Sort out your time and priorities the way Seneca advised: count each day, stop putting life off, test your fears, practise for hard times, and take good ideas from anyone.
Big ideas
- Time is the only thing that is yours: The first letter opens with time.
- Life is long if you know how to use it: In *On the Shortness of Life*, he argues against the common complaint that life is too short.
- Stop getting ready to live: He saw putting things off as the biggest waste of all.
- Most fears are imagined: In Letter 13 he says more things frighten us than crush us .
- Rehearse hard times while things are good: He tells Lucilius to set aside a few days now and then to live on the cheapest food and wear rough clothes, and to ask himself whether this is what he feared .
- Know what enough is: He passes on a line from Epicurus that contented poverty is an honourable state .
Hire Seneca for
- Time and busyness: Find where the week went, and take back an hour.
- Procrastination: Stop waiting to live and start the thing.
- Anxiety about what might happen: Test a fear for proof before you act on it.
- Rehearsing a bad outcome: Practise the worst case in small doses.
- Enough: Decide how much money, status or stuff you need before the want runs on.
- Anger and replies: Wait before you answer.
- Leading and treating staff: Treat people below you as you would want to be treated from above.
- Study and reading: Read a few things deeply, and keep one idea each day.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Moral letters to Lucilius (Wikisource; Letters 1, 2, 7, 13, 16, 18, 24, 28, 47 and 84 read), Seneca, translated by Richard Mott Gummere (Loeb Classical Library, 1917, 1920 and 1925)
- On the shortness of life (Wikisource), Seneca, translated by John W. Basore (1932)
- Seneca, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Robert Wagoner, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Seneca the Younger, Wikipedia
- Minor Dialogues, together with the Dialogue on Clemency (On Anger, On Peace of Mind, On the Shortness of Life, On Leisure, On a Happy Life, Consolations), translated by Aubrey Stewart, 1900, Seneca; Project Gutenberg ebook 64576
- Moral letters to Lucilius, further letters (6, 83 and 91), Wikisource, Seneca, translated by Richard Mott Gummere (Loeb Classical Library)
- On Benefits (De Beneficiis), Project Gutenberg eBook #3794, Seneca, translated by Aubrey Stewart (1887)
- The Annals, Book 14 (Seneca asks to retire, AD 62), English translation on Wikisource, Tacitus
- The Annals, Book 15 (the death of Seneca, AD 65), English translation on Wikisource, Tacitus