Epicureanism – Nemo's Library

Seneca the Younger: The Moral Epistles III

Posted on May 4, 2020; Last updated on May 16, 2020

LXXXIV: On Gathering and Digesting Ideas We ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate ; then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us,—in other words, our natural gifts,—we should so blend those several flavours into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its […]

Seneca the Younger: The Moral Epistles II

Posted on February 10, 2020; Last updated on May 16, 2020

XLI. On Divinity God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucilius : a holy spirit indwells within us. one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fortune unless God […]

Seneca the Younger: The Moral Epistles

Posted on February 4, 2020; Last updated on May 16, 2020

II. On Discursive Reading 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. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having […]

“On Ends” by Cicero

Posted on October 29, 2011; Last updated on July 21, 2021

[Original Latin Title: De Finibus Bonorum Et Malorum; Volume XVII of Loeb Classical Library’s 28-volume series] An Epicurean’s Criticism of Education “[Epicurus] refused to consider any education worth the name that did not help to school us in happiness. Was he to spend his time in perusing poets, who give us nothing solid and useful, but merely childish amusement? Was he to occupy himself like Plato with music and geometry, […]

“On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius

Posted on July 31, 2010; Last updated on February 24, 2018

Cicero, because of his personal aversion to the Epicurean philosophy, didn’t quite do it justice in his book The Nature of the Gods, which introduced the Greek philosophical schools to the Romans. He all but made the Epicurean the laughing-stock of all the other philosophers. However, he also prepared and edited the transcript of this book by Lucretius, arguably the best exposition of Epicureanism, as a counterpoint. Lucretius made a […]