Link to: Moral letters to Lucilius
Letter 2 is one of my favorites. I've put up a couple of quotes on the blog before, from a slightly different translation. Here are a couple of those quotes from this translation:
Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.
That quote and some personal reflection helped lead me to change my investing-related reading and separate it into maintenance vs. growth reading. Basically I try and read (or listen to) just a little bit of certain books just about every day before I allow myself to venture into other things. The 12 books I've picked so far for that task are listed HERE.
And then from that same letter, one of my favorite quotes from Seneca:
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.
If you want to read this translation on the Kindle, you can find the first 65 of them HERE. If you buy those for $0.99, you can also buy the Audible.com reading of those 65 for $1.99. You can also get a full collection of his letters on the Kindle for $0.99, HERE.
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Related previous post: Stoicism quotes, thoughts, and readings
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Related previous post: Stoicism quotes, thoughts, and readings