Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join us as we search for ancient lessons for modern life in Seneca’s timeless classic Letters from a Stoic.

In a letter titled On Discursiveness in Reading, Seneca wrote, “Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers and digest their works if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.”

Seneca advised,

So you should always read standard authors, and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well, and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

“This is my own custom,” explained Seneca, “from the many things which I have read, I claim one part for myself.” […]

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