Seneca: On the Firmness of the Wise Man | Audiobook (my narration)

This is my own recording of the second essay of L Annaeus Seneca. It was written sometime around 55 AD and celebrates the imperturbility of the ideal Stoic sage, who with an inner firmness, is strengthened by injury and adversity.

Support me here: https://linktr.ee/VoxStoica
Amazon: https://geni.us/SenecaDialogues (affiliate link)
Audible: https://geni.us/VoxStoicaOnAudible
Hoopla: https://www.hoopladigital.com/artist/4396287904
Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Firmness_of_the_Wise_Man

The Notes I Took:
“…untested power is untrustworthy, whereas that solidity which hurls back all attacks is deservedly regarded as the most trustworthy of all”

“‘it would be better,’ say you, ‘if no one [treated the wise man badly].’ You are expressing a wish that the whole human race were inoffensive, which may hardly be”

“such is the weakness of men's minds, that many think that there is nothing more bitter than insult”

“wisdom leaves no room for evil; to it, the only evil is baseness, which cannot enter into the place already occupied by virtue and honour. If, therefore, there can be no injury without evil, and no evil without baseness, and baseness cannot find any place with a man who is already filled with honour, it follows that no injury can reach the wise man”

“the wise man can lose nothing. He has invested everything in himself, has entrusted nothing to fortune, has his property in safety, and is content with virtue, which does not need casual accessories, and therefore can neither be increased or diminished”

“fortune does not give virtue; therefore she does not take it away. Virtue is free”

“The wise man therefore can lose nothing of whose loss he will be sensible, for he is the property of virtue alone, from whom he never can be taken away. He enjoys all other things at the good pleasure of fortune; but who is grieved at the loss of what is not his own?”

“What was being plundered and carried away hither and thither he did not consider to be his own, but to be merely things which come and go at the caprice of fortune; therefore he had not loved them as his own, for the possession of all things which come from without is slippery and insecure.”

“no siege engines can be discovered which can shake a well-established mind”

“what belongs to myself is with me, and ever will be”

“it is possible for someone to do an injury to me, and yet for me not to receive it”

“if we know that death is not an evil, and therefore is not an injury either, we shall much more easily endure the other things, such as losses, pains, disgraces, changes of abode, bereavements, and partings”

“So far, however, is he from shrinking from the encounter either of circumstances or of men, that he makes use of injury itself to make trial of himself and test his own virtue”

“bodily pain and weakness, the loss of friends and children, and the ruin of his country in war-time. I do not say that the wise man does not feel these, for we do not ascribe to him the hardness of stone or iron; there is no virtue but is conscious of its own endurance.”

“In the same spirit in which we deal with boys, the wise man deals with all those whose childhood still endures after their youth is past and their hair is grey”

“the wise man, therefore, is quite justified in treating the affronts which he receives from such men as jokes”

“Seek out sufferings and all things hard to be borne, repulsive to be heard or seen”

“We do not deny that it is an unpleasant thing to be beaten or struck, or to lose one of our limbs, but we say that none of these things are injuries. We do not take away from them the feeling of pain, but the name of ‘injury,’ which cannot be received while our virtue is unimpaired”

“it is a sort of revenge to spoil a man's enjoyment of the insult he has offered to us;”
“the success of an insult lies in the sensitiveness and rage of the victim”

“Let wounded spirits, then, console themselves with this reflexion, that, even though our easy temper may have neglected to revenge itself, nevertheless that there will be someone who will punish the impertinent, proud, and insulting man, for these are vices which he never confines to one victim or one single offensive act.”

“all things happen in a more endurable fashion to men who are prepared for them”

“We ought not to engage in quarrels and wrangling; we ought to betake ourselves far away and to disregard everything of this kind which thoughtless people do (indeed thoughtless people alone do it), and to set equal value upon the honours and the reproaches of the mob; we ought not to be hurt by the one or to be pleased by the other”

“freedom consists in raising one's mind superior to injuries and becoming a person whose pleasures come from himself alone”