Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 2: On discursiveness in reading
Letter 2 praises Lucilius for staying in one place and warns against the same restlessness in reading: many authors visited in haste leave nothing behind.
Seneca keeps to a few tested authors and takes one thought a day to digest, then borrows from Epicurus the idea that a poverty content with itself is no poverty at all.
From the letter
The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.
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.
Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.
Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Quotes checked against this letter
Coverage
Our editions hold 30 letters of 124 in Richard Mott Gummere’s translation (1917–1925); 29 of them have a page here, those that Joseph Baillard’s French translation (1861) also contains.
Seneca and Epictetus are in Stoic+ — 2 passages of this letter, each with its reference; Marcus Aurelius is free in the app.