Quote checked against the text
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — attributed to Seneca
Yes. The sentence is in the text, at Letters to Lucilius, 13, §4; Richard Mott Gummere’s 1917–1925 edition is quoted below.
Yes. The sentence is in Letter 13, On groundless fears, word for word in Gummere’s translation (1917–1925), at the fourth section: “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” The line that circulates is the second half of that sentence, unchanged.
The context is not a consolation but an argument. Seneca tells Lucilius that some things torment us more than they ought, some before they ought, and some when they ought not to torment us at all: we are in the habit of exaggerating, imagining or anticipating sorrow. He adds that he is not speaking in the Stoic strain but in his milder style, which is why the line sounds gentler than most of the letters.
Of the 124 letters, we hold 30 in Gummere’s text; this one is among them, so the attribution can be checked at the line, and the whole letter is read at Letter 13.
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 "imagination than in reality" "likely to frighten us"
George Long, 1862 — Meditations · 12 books, 487 chapters (1 file)
"imagination than in reality" 0 hits
"likely to frighten us" 0 hits
Richard Mott Gummere, 1917–1925 — Letters to Lucilius · 30 letters of 124 (30 files)
"imagination than in reality" 1 hit
letter-13.txt l. 7 …more often in imagination than in reality. I am…
"likely to frighten us" 1 hit
letter-13.txt l. 7 …more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are…
Aubrey Stewart, 1889 — Minor Dialogues · 10 dialogues, 6 aligned with Baillard chapter for chapter (10 files)
"imagination than in reality" 0 hits
"likely to frighten us" 0 hits
Elizabeth Carter, 1758 — Enchiridion · 52 chapters (Carter’s numbering) (1 file)
"imagination than in reality" 0 hits
"likely to frighten us" 0 hits
George Long, 1877 — Discourses (selection) and Enchiridion · a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion (1 file)
"imagination than in reality" 0 hits
"likely to frighten us" 0 hits
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr "en imagination qu'en réalité" "plus de choses qui font peur"
Auguste Couat, 1904 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters (IV, 19–20 and VII, 47–48 merged by the translator) (12 files)
"en imagination qu'en réalité" 0 hits
"plus de choses qui font peur" 0 hits
Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 1876 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters — second French edition, shown beside Couat (12 files)
"en imagination qu'en réalité" 0 hits
"plus de choses qui font peur" 0 hits
Joseph Baillard, 1861 — Lettres à Lucilius · 29 letters of 124 (29 files)
"en imagination qu'en réalité" 0 hits
"plus de choses qui font peur" 1 hit
lettre-13.txt l. 5 …a, ô Lucilius, plus de choses qui font peur qu’il n’y en…
Joseph Baillard, 1861 — Dialogues et traités · 11 works, 6 aligned with Stewart chapter for chapter (11 files)
"en imagination qu'en réalité" 0 hits
"plus de choses qui font peur" 0 hits
Jean-Marie Guyau, 1875 — Manuel · 53 chapters (modern numbering) (1 file)
"en imagination qu'en réalité" 0 hits
"plus de choses qui font peur" 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)
"en imagination qu'en réalité" 0 hits
"plus de choses qui font peur" 0 hitsThis sentence appears 3 times in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
How to cite
The passage, in the edition quoted above:
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 13, §4 (trans. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917–1925)
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.