Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium
Book by Lucius Annaeus SenecaWikipedia
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Search complete. 114 mentions across 8 episodes found for "Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium".
Oct 16, 2026
Gareth WilliamsGUEST
There was the credo of every day is a complete life.
Gareth WilliamsGUEST
Seneca buys into this, and he does so not least in a wonderful collection of moral letters he wrote called the Epistulae Morales.
Gareth WilliamsGUEST
Each of the letters, there are one hundred and twenty-four of them that survive.
Gareth WilliamsGUEST
Each of them begins with, "Greetings, Lucilius." And each of them ends with, "Vale.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Level 20.
speaker_2NARRATOR
The Roman Stoic Seneca wrote letters to a friend named Lucilius, and in one of them, he remarks on fear.
speaker_2NARRATOR
There are more things likely to frighten us, he says, than there are to crush us.
speaker_2NARRATOR
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
13 MINS LATER
speaker_2NARRATOR
The question is gentle and it will keep until morning.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Level 36.
speaker_2NARRATOR
The Roman Stoic Seneca describes a bedtime habit that he attributes to an earlier philosopher named Sextius.
speaker_2NARRATOR
At the end of each day, when he had retired for the night, Sextius would question his own mind.
speaker_1HOST
That's a mistake.
speaker_1HOST
They wrote some of the most beautiful pages ever written about love, friendship and marriage.
speaker_1HOST
The first teachers of the school defined love as the impulse to form a friendship with someone, born of the beauty we see in that person.
speaker_1HOST
The destination of love, for them, wasn't to possess the other person, but to become their friend.
speaker_1HOST
And Seneca summed it up in a line that still sounds radical today.
7 MINS LATER
speaker_1HOST
He doesn't love because he needs, he loves because he has something to offer.
speaker_1HOST
And whoever loves like that never begs, because they aren't asking for anything, they're giving.
speaker_1HOST
Seneca adds something very hard about friendships built on need.
Scott SmithHOST
You can't let the fear control you so far that you don't take action because you're afraid to take action.
Scott SmithHOST
Seneca, in something that he wrote, uh, called Moral Letters to Lucilius, Seneca said, "There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us." And then we get the famous line from Seneca, "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Scott SmithHOST
That's usually the part that we focus on from Seneca with this quote, but let's focus a little bit on this one.
Scott SmithHOST
There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us.
Ryan HolidayHOST
Nature bids us to do well by all.
Ryan HolidayHOST
Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness." And then in Moral Letters 95, he says, "Nature produced us as a family, since we all sprang from the same source and towards the same end.
Ryan HolidayHOST
Nature bestowed upon us a mutual love and joined us together as friends." I think going out into nature, looking at something majestic, or as Edgar Mitchell did, looking at the Earth from a distance, it does give you this sense of our interconnectedness.
Ryan HolidayHOST
It makes a lot of the things that we get angry about feel very petty and small and insignificant.
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Because a great trip starts with peace of mind.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
Chapter 1 of Moral Letters, Volume 2.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
This is a LibriVox recording.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Supradha Urval.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
Moral Letters, Volume 2 by Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
Translated by Richard M. Gummere.
Supradha UrvalNARRATOR
66.
speaker_8NARRATOR
It is in this transition, from the bright, public afternoon to the quieter, more private evening, that Seneca's first letter to his friend Lucilius begins.
speaker_8NARRATOR
The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, the moral letters to Lucilius, are a collection of 124 letters written in the last years of Seneca's life.
speaker_8NARRATOR
Probably between 62 and 65 CE, after he had withdrawn, or been pushed, from Nero's court, and was living in a kind of semi-retirement that he knew might end at any time in his ordered death.
speaker_8NARRATOR
The letters are addressed to Lucilius, a younger man who held the governorship of Sicily, and who seems to have been, by temperament and station, very much like the person walking past the garden.