True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, playwright and adviser to the emperor Nero, who eventually ordered him to take his own life. He is best known for the Letters to Lucilius and the essay On the Shortness of Life, in which he writes about time, mortality and his own failings plainly and without ornament. His work has stayed in circulation almost without interruption for two millennia.
About this theme: Happiness
Few subjects have been written about so much with so little agreement. For Aristotle happiness was not a feeling but a way of living — eudaimonia, visible only when a life is viewed whole. For the Epicureans it was the absence of disturbance. For the Stoics it was a consequence of virtue and never a target. None of these is the same as being in a good mood, yet that substitution is the one most often made.
More by Seneca
More on Happiness
- The earth laughs in flowers.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
- He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.— Lao Tzu
- Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.— Epictetus
- He is richest who is content with the least.— Socrates
- Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.— Charles Dickens