On the shortness of life - Seneca

It is a tiny book. There is one thing about the writing style that makes me genuinely angry: la figura retorica della preterizione, “che consiste nell’affermare di voler tacere qualcosa di cui tuttavia si parla o comunque si fa cenno”. Either you write something, and then you do, or you don’t write something, and then you don’t, but why would you write that something does not need to be said and then say it anyway - aren’t you wasting both my and your time, if it is so?

But I guess the main point is that I wholeheartedly agree with everything in the book, which did not really give me new stimuli. This is of course not really the author’s fault.

I found a hint at the manifesto of antifragility:

How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.

If I remember correctly Seneca is quoted often in Taleb, so this is not too surprising. Two more quotes that I looked up in the original source:

Nihil enim, quod intra mundum est, alienum homini est

Elevanda ergo omnia et facili animo ferenda: humanius est deridere vitam quam deplorare