1Do you think I am going to write to you about how kindly the winter has dealt with us, a winter both mild and short, how grudging the spring is, how unseasonable the cold, and other trifles of people hunting for something to say? 1No, I shall write something which can be of use both to me and to you. 1And what will that be, except to urge you towards a sound mind? 1Do you ask what its foundation is? 1Not to rejoice in empty things. 1I said that this was the foundation; 1it is the summit. 2He has reached the heights who knows what to rejoice in, who has not placed his happiness in another's power; 2anxious and unsure of himself is the man whom some hope provokes, even if it is close at hand, even if it is sought without difficulty, even if the things he hoped for have never deceived him.
3Do this before everything, my Lucilius: learn to rejoice. 3Do you think now that I am taking many pleasures away from you, I who remove the gifts of chance, who think that hopes, the sweetest of delights, must be avoided? 3On the contrary, I do not want you ever to lack gladness. 3I want it to be born for you at home; 3and it is born there, provided only that it is within your own self. 3Other kinds of merriment do not fill the heart; they smooth the brow, they are shallow, unless perhaps you judge that the man who laughs is rejoicing. 3The mind ought to be eager and confident and raised above everything.
4Believe me, true joy is a serious matter. 4Or do you think that anyone, with a relaxed face and, as those dainty people put it, a jolly one, despises death, opens his house to poverty, keeps pleasures under the bridle, and practises the endurance of pain? 4The man who turns these things over within himself is in great joy, but hardly an alluring one. 4It is in possession of this joy that I want you to be; 4it will never fail, once you have found where it is to be sought. 5The yield of poor mines lies on the surface; 5the richest are those whose vein lies hidden in the depths, ready to answer ever more fully to the man who keeps digging.
5These things which delight the crowd give a thin and superficial pleasure, and any joy that is brought in from outside lacks a foundation. 5This joy of which I speak, towards which I am trying to lead you, is solid, and of the kind that opens out more widely within. 6Do, I beg you, dearest Lucilius, the one thing that can make you happy: scatter and trample underfoot those things which glitter on the outside, which are promised to you by another or from another; look towards the true good and rejoice in what is your own. 6But what is this 'what is your own'? 6Yourself and the best part of you.
6Your poor body too, even if nothing can be done without it, believe to be a necessary thing rather than a great one; 6it supplies empty pleasures, short-lived, to be regretted, and destined, unless they are tempered with great moderation, to turn into their opposite. 6This is what I mean: pleasure, standing on a steep slope, tips towards pain unless it has kept within bounds. 6But it is hard to keep within bounds in something you have believed to be good. 6Eagerness for the true good is safe. 7Do you ask what that is, or where it comes from? 7I shall tell you: from a good conscience, from honourable intentions, from right actions, from contempt for the gifts of chance, from the calm and unbroken course of a life that treads a single path.
7For those who will pass from some purposes to others, or will not even pass, but are carried across by some chance, how can they have anything certain or lasting, hanging and wandering as they are? 8There are few who order themselves and their affairs by deliberate plan; the rest, like things that float on rivers, do not go, but are carried along. 8Of these, some a gentler wave has held back and borne more softly, others a more violent one has snatched away, others, as the current slackened, it has set down nearest the bank, others a torrent's rush has flung out into the sea. 8Therefore we must decide what we want, and persevere in it.
9This is the place for paying off my debt. 9For I can render you a saying of your Epicurus and so free this letter from obligation: 'It is a wretched thing always to be beginning life.' 9Or, if the sense can be better expressed in this way: 'They live badly who are always beginning to live.' 10'Why?' 10you ask, for that saying needs explanation. 10Because their life is always incomplete. 10But a man who is only now beginning to live cannot stand prepared for death. 10We must make it our aim to have lived enough. 10No one thinks this who is just at this moment starting to weave his life.
11There is no reason for you to think that these are few; 11they are almost everyone. 11Some, indeed, begin only when they must stop. 11If you think this strange, I shall add something to surprise you more: some have stopped living before they began. 11Farewell.