Top Highlights

• Some other Man, in my Place, would perchance, make you twenty Apologies, for his want of Skill, and Address, in governing this Affair, but these are Formal, and Pedantique Fooleries: As if any Man that first takes himself for a Coxcomb in his own Heart, would afterwards make himself one in Print too. This Abstract, such as it is, you are extremely ...
• ‘as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles without having good practice?’ Seneca, all the same, may well be history’s most notable example of a man who failed to live up to his principles.
• Living ‘in accordance with nature’ means not only questioning convention and training ourselves to do without all except the necessities (plain food, water, basic clothing and shelter) but developing the inborn gift of reason which marks us off as different from the animal world. We are meant to set free or perfect this rational element, this parti...
• This, the summum bonum or ‘supreme ideal’, is usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities: wisdom (or moral insight), courage, self-control and justice (or upright dealing). It enables a man to be ‘self-sufficient’, immune to suffering, superior to the wounds and upsets of life (often personalized as Fortuna, the god...
• Epicurus: ‘If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be