Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 23: On the true joy which comes from philosophy
Letter 23 sets aside the weather and turns to the one thing worth writing about: a joy that does not depend on externals.
Seneca locates it in a good conscience and a steady course, distinct from the laughter of the crowd, and quotes Epicurus on those who are always beginning to live.
From the letter
We have reached the heights if we know what it is that we find joy in and if we have not placed our happiness in the control of externals.
But the joy of which I speak, that to which I am endeavouring to lead you, is something solid, disclosing itself the more fully as you penetrate into it.
I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purposes, from right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path.
There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose; the rest do not proceed; they are merely swept along, like objects afloat in a river.
Or another, which will perhaps express the meaning better: “They live ill who are always beginning to live.”
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.