It took a while but finally confirmed this to be a real quote from Seneca. The quote I saw was:
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
Seneca was a Stoic so it sounds right but it seemed a little too pat. I was concerned that it might be a modern manufactured quote attributed to Seneca. A little digging leads to Letter 13, On Groundless Fears, in Seneca's letters to Lucilius.
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Slight translation differences but otherwise the same substance. I do prefer the first version.
The ancients seem so much clearer in their thinking than our modern leaders. "We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality" seems an excellent summary of our leadership's well-intentioned but frequently misguided efforts to address the global pandemic of what will turn out to be an endemic virus of minor consequence.
No comments:
Post a Comment