Quote checked against the text
“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” — attributed to Seneca
Not found. The sentence was searched in the 30 letters of Gummere’s translation (1917–1925) we hold, out of 124, and in the ten dialogues we have from Stewart’s 1889 volume and did not appear; the search and its result are below.
Not in our files. “What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself” is in none of the 30 letters of Gummere’s translation (1917–1925) we hold, out of 124, and in none of the ten Stewart dialogues we hold. Both fragments, “friend to myself” and “what progress, you ask”, return nothing in those files, nor in our Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus editions.
The reason is coverage, not doubt: modern collections place the sentence in Letter 6, §7 of Gummere’s numbering, where Seneca reports it as Hecato’s words, not his own. That letter is not among the files we hold. We list it so that the reader knows what we could check and what we could not.
Until that letter is in our editions, the verdict stays at what we can prove: no locator in the 30 letters and ten dialogues we have. What those files do hold on friendship is at Letter 3, on judging a man before trusting him, and at Letter 9, on why the wise man wants friends although he can do without them.
What we searched
Each fragment is searched, normalized, in every file of the editions below. The block is the search and its result, replayed at each build.
The wording was searched in the 30 letters of Gummere’s translation (1917–1925) we hold, out of 124, and in the ten dialogues we have from Stewart’s 1889 volume.
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang en "friend to myself" "what progress, you ask" George Long, 1862 — Meditations · 12 books, 487 chapters (1 file) "friend to myself" 0 hits "what progress, you ask" 0 hits Richard Mott Gummere, 1917–1925 — Letters to Lucilius · 30 letters of 124 (30 files) "friend to myself" 0 hits "what progress, you ask" 0 hits Aubrey Stewart, 1889 — Minor Dialogues · 10 dialogues, 6 aligned with Baillard chapter for chapter (10 files) "friend to myself" 0 hits "what progress, you ask" 0 hits Elizabeth Carter, 1758 — Enchiridion · 52 chapters (Carter’s numbering) (1 file) "friend to myself" 0 hits "what progress, you ask" 0 hits George Long, 1877 — Discourses (selection) and Enchiridion · a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion (1 file) "friend to myself" 0 hits "what progress, you ask" 0 hits $ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr "ami de moi-même" "quels progrès j'ai faits" Auguste Couat, 1904 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters (IV, 19–20 and VII, 47–48 merged by the translator) (12 files) "ami de moi-même" 0 hits "quels progrès j'ai faits" 0 hits Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 1876 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters — second French edition, shown beside Couat (12 files) "ami de moi-même" 0 hits "quels progrès j'ai faits" 0 hits Joseph Baillard, 1861 — Lettres à Lucilius · 29 letters of 124 (29 files) "ami de moi-même" 0 hits "quels progrès j'ai faits" 0 hits Joseph Baillard, 1861 — Dialogues et traités · 11 works, 6 aligned with Stewart chapter for chapter (11 files) "ami de moi-même" 0 hits "quels progrès j'ai faits" 0 hits Jean-Marie Guyau, 1875 — Manuel · 53 chapters (modern numbering) (1 file) "ami de moi-même" 0 hits "quels progrès j'ai faits" 0 hits Victor Courdaveaux, 1862 — Entretiens · 9 chapters of the Discourses (I, 1 · I, 15 · I, 18 · I, 24 · I, 25 · II, 13 · II, 18 · III, 16 · III, 24) (9 files) "ami de moi-même" 0 hits "quels progrès j'ai faits" 0 hits
This sentence appears 4 times in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
There is no passage to quote: the wording is in none of the editions searched above.
How to cite
This sentence has no canonical reference: it is not in the editions we hold. Quoting it with a book and chapter would be a false reference.
Other sentences checked
All sentences attributed to SenecaAll quote checks
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference. The 171 passages of Seneca are in Stoic+, each with its locator.