#seneca

Once we face our fear, once we treat our anxiety itself as a thing, we can then choose otherwise. Instead of filling the unknown in our minds with expectations of the tragic, we can choose to fill the void with a different expectation – the expectation of adventure. For example, Seneca, the Greek philosopher, refused to be afraid of what he did not know. When asked if he was afraid of dying, he replied, “Absolutely not, why should I be afraid of something I know nothing about.” His orientation toward the unknown of death was not to fill the gap in his understanding with horror but potential. ↗

— David W. Jones

#death #disney-world #facing-fear #facing-problems #fear

I think Seneca is right: life feels longer the more you engage with it.... I should be loving sculpture! But I have not gone deeply into sculpture. Instead, having been utterly insensitive to sculpture, I fill the time that might have been usefully devoted to sculpture with things like drinking and staring into space. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#life #sculpture #seneca #time #love

My mom worked as a hairdresser at the Village Mall in Horsham Township when I was a little kid. There was a movie theater in the mall that showed second-run features, and I have clear memories of being around five years old and walking through the mall by myself to go watch Star Wars. I believe I saw it in that theater twenty-one times. The research definitely began then. Actually, it began even earlier. Before I was born, my father conspired with my uncle to name me Wyatt, after Wyatt Earp. There was an election held by putting names into a hat, and whatever name was drawn would be the winner. Uncle Billy distracted the people in attendance while my dad rigged the hat so that every name inside read Wyatt. My mom was horrified at the result, but eventually uncovered their ruse. The research was really just me referring to things I already knew from the life I’ve lived. You either hear the music of the open range and a man with two six-shooters or you don’t. You either look out at the stars and wonder what lies beyond them or…I don’t know what you are…someone who loves Nicholas Sparks books. ↗

— Bernard Schaffer

#love

We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#oneness #seneca #nature

How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide! ↗

— Oriana Fallaci

#asking #committed #dare #did #how

Seneca brings vividly before us a picture of the various scholars assembled in a school of the philosophers. ↗

— Frederic William Farrar

#before #brings #philosophers #picture #scholars

The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica. ↗

— Frederic William Farrar

#claudius #decision #guilt #his #innocence

Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation. ↗

— Frederic William Farrar

#became #before #died #extinct #father

We learn not in the school, but in life. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#life

What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water? ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#jimi-the-kewl #natural-questions #seneca #nature