STOICISM, LETTERS & PRACTICAL WISDOM: ROMAN, C. 4 BC - 65 AD

Seneca

Letters on the Art of Living

From the corridors of Nero's court, Seneca composed letters that have outlasted the empire that condemned him. Drawn from the Epistulae Morales and On the Shortness of Life, this course teaches you to reckon with time, fortune, and the hidden cost of borrowed lives.

DRAWN FROM LETTERS TO LUCILIUS, ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND, ON THE HAPPY LIFE

12 CHAPTERS | 4 HOURS

- Reclaim Your Hours
  
  You complain that life is too short. I tell you: it is not short — you have squandered it. We give our hours away to ambition, gossip, and entertainments as if we were immortal, then weep at death's door that we had no time.
  
  You complain that life is too short. I tell you: it is not short — you have squandered it. We give our hours away to ambition, gossip, and entertainments as if we were immortal, then weep at death's door that we had no time.
- The Tyranny of the Future
  
  Hope, that most respectable of vices, chains a man to a life he has not yet lived while the one he has slips away. I am not telling you to stop dreaming — I am telling you to stop living in your dreams at the expense of the present moment.
  
  Hope, that most respectable of vices, chains a man to a life he has not yet lived while the one he has slips away. I am not telling you to stop dreaming — I am telling you to stop living in your dreams at the expense of the present moment.
- What Philosophy Is Actually For
  
  Philosophy is not an ornament worn at dinner parties to impress educated guests. It is a tool — blunt, practical, sometimes brutal — for cutting away what is false and finding what in you is solid. Begin there, or do not begin at all.
  
  Philosophy is not an ornament worn at dinner parties to impress educated guests. It is a tool — blunt, practical, sometimes brutal — for cutting away what is false and finding what in you is solid. Begin there, or do not begin at all.

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“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

SENECA, LETTERS TO LUCILIUS

Seneca

Chapter 1

Reclaim Your Hours

Chapter 2

The Tyranny of the Future

Chapter 3

What Philosophy Is Actually For