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Seneca

“Withdraw into yourself as much as you can.”

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter VII.8 Recede in te ipse quantum potes.

Documented source

Attribution
Seneca
Source
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter VII.8 Recede in te ipse quantum potes.
In full
“Withdraw into yourself as much as you can.”
Status
Public domain in the United States

Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →

About this line

Seneca wrote this the day he came home from the gladiatorial games — disturbed not by the killing but by the crowd, and by what the crowd had done to him. He felt smaller than when he’d left. His counsel: keep company that improves you, avoid company that drags you down, and when neither is available, go inward.

Why we carry this line

Seneca’s counsel was excellent. Sounds a lot like the five people you hang around you hear these days. Are you hanging with those who make you better? Or those who drag you down? I know that room — the one that shrinks you. Sometimes the move is to go inward. Permission, from two thousand years back.

The design

Set in Roman capitals, the way Latin was cut into stone. The small dots are interpuncts, the marks Roman stonecutters carved between words.