“There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca · Moral Letters to Lucilius 13.4
Paraphrase or translation
Close translation of a sentence in Letter 13. Seneca's Latin is secure. The English 'suffer more in imagination than in reality' is the usual, fair compression of the second clause.
The mainstream reading is that we suffer more often in what we rehearse than in what happens, because anticipated disaster is itself a present pain and usually larger than the event. A competing reading folds the advice into Stoic metaphysics, where most of what we fear is an indifferent, so the psychology is not a free-standing therapy. The sentence is in Moral Letters 13.4, a letter about groundless and exaggerated fear addressed to Lucilius. Gummere's English is close to the Latin.
Open the card“It is not things that disturb people, but their judgements about things.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 5
Paraphrase or translation
Close translation of a core Epictetan sentence, via Arrian. Modern therapies that sound like this are often, knowingly or not, in this line.
The mainstream reading is that disturbance lives in the judgement added to an event, so the workable part is the verdict rather than the fact. A competing reading says this underplays bodily shock and other people's real cruelty, which can harm you before any tidy judgement is formed. The sentence is Enchiridion 5, and it is the claim modern therapies often echo, knowingly or not. Assent, not the first flicker, is where he locates the work.
Open the card“Do not seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 8
Paraphrase or translation
Standard translation of Handbook 8. It is easy to over-read as passivity. In context it is about desire, not about refusing to act.
The mainstream reading is that wanting events to match your preference is a way of being defeated, while wanting to meet what happens is a wish that can succeed. A competing reading hears passivity, as if he were forbidding plans, whereas the chapter is about desire, not about refusing to act where action is up to you. It is Enchiridion 8, in the same cluster as the opening distinction. A Stoic can still call an action vicious, and still refuse to be shattered by the fact that it occurred.
Open the card“People seek retreats for themselves, in the country, by the sea, in the hills. But this is altogether unphilosophical, when you can at any moment retreat into yourself.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 4.3
Paraphrase or translation
Close to the sense of 4.3 in standard translations. He goes on to say the retreat must be to a soul that is ordered; otherwise the inner room is just as noisy.
The mainstream reading is that a change of scenery will not quiet you if you bring a disordered mind, and that a retreat into yourself is available at any moment. A competing reading stops before his caveat: the inner room helps only if the soul you enter is ordered, otherwise it is just as noisy as the seaside. The passage is Meditations 4.3. The same chapter contains the line that the universe is change and life is opinion.
Open the card“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 2.1
Paraphrase or translation
The Greek is secure private writing. This English follows Hays closely and is a little freer than Long. The next sentences say he still has to work with them, because they share in reason.
The mainstream reading is that the morning list of other people's faults is a preparation against surprise, not a licence for contempt, because the next sentences insist he must still work with them as kin in reason. A competing reading stops at the list and hears a superior man bracing for a world of fools. The note opens Book 2 of the Meditations, private Greek to himself. Hays's English is a little freer than Long's, and the kinship lines are part of the same paragraph.
Open the card“It is not the person who abuses or strikes you who insults you, but your judgement that these things are insulting.”
Epictetus · Enchiridion 20
Paraphrase or translation
Close to W. A. Oldfather's Loeb translation of Enchiridion 20. Arrian recorded the Handbook; Epictetus taught it.
The mainstream reading is that an insult is completed by your judgement that the abuse or the blow degrades you, so the workable part is that judgement. A competing reading says a strike is already a harm and an injustice, and that locating insult only in the victim's mind excuses the striker. The chapter is Enchiridion 20, a hard case of the claim that judgements disturb us. Epictetus, who had been enslaved, is not ignorant of blows, and he is redescribing what can reach the will.
Open the card“The universe is transformation; life is opinion.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 4.3, in the tradition of George Long's translation
Paraphrase or translation
Long's memorable English of a Greek sentence near the end of 4.3 (ho kosmos alloiōsis, ho bios hypolēpsis). Other translators say 'the world is change; life is judgement' or similar. The thought is his; the punch is the translator's.
The mainstream reading packs two claims into a short line: everything outside is in flux, and the quality of a life is the quality of the judgements it assents to. A competing reading takes 'life is opinion' as if the world were only a private story, which drops the first half, the claim about a transforming universe. The Greek is near the end of Meditations 4.3, and George Long's 1862 English gives the punch, while other translators say life is judgement. The cadence is the translator's, and eight words are not the whole system.
Open the card