The Book of Seneca 4 · Handed down at Rome, from his letters and essays
Much of what Seneca said accords with the axioms. Much of what he did did not. Chapter 5 is his own account of it. This book keeps what does not accord, and does not cover it over.
4.1Fortune does not give. Fortune lends.
4.2Your children are lent to you, your name is lent to you, your body is lent to you.
4.3When what was lent is called back, men cry out: I am robbed.
4.4Nobody is robbed. The term is up.
4.5I am not telling you not to love. I am telling you to love knowing it is lent.
4.6A man who knows it is lent loves more closely, not more thinly.
4.7Some say: how is a man to be happy, thinking like that?
4.8I say: only the man who knows he must give it back has truly used it.
4.9If you hold your child thinking that he too will die, you will hold him a while longer.
4.10I do not tell you to weep in advance for what you have not yet lost. That is paying twice for one thing.
4.11I tell you to look up, once, while you still have it.
4.12That one look is the only thing that cannot be called back.