"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
— Seneca
We Suffer More Often In Imagination
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
About this quote
Written around 63-65 AD as part of the Epistulae Morales, a collection of 124 letters to his friend Lucilius, then governor of Sicily. In Letter 13, Seneca tackles anticipatory anxiety - the habit of rehearsing disasters that may never arrive. The insight prefigures modern cognitive behavioral therapy by nearly two millennia, and the letter remains one of the most frequently cited Stoic texts on the psychology of worry.
Source
Letters to Lucilius, Letter 13
