"Excellence of mind cannot be borrowed or bought. I think too that if it were for sale, it would not find a buyer. Yet wickedness is purchased every day."
- Seneca, Letters 27.8
From a stoic point of view all of us are very, very far from wisdom - and since we are not wise we do most things for the wrong reasons. We spend time and money on things that will not give us the happiness that we seek - and in doing so we become worse human beings. Perhaps we do in fact spend money on self-improvement - but do we also invest the proper amount of time and energy on it? Did that course we took or that book we purchased really find a true buyer in us? Or did it end up as yet another badly digested project - beaten by Netflix and Facebook?
"I am ashamed to say it; but we worship that which is honourable only in so far as we have time to spare. But what a rich reward awaits us if only we break off the affairs which forestall us and the evils that cling to us with utter tenacity."
"I am ashamed to say it; but we worship that which is honourable only in so far as we have time to spare. But what a rich reward awaits us if only we break off the affairs which forestall us and the evils that cling to us with utter tenacity."
- Seneca, Letters 75.16