Plain
Seneca — The Senator

Since I've started defining things more loosely, you could call someone "happy" if they've used reason to stop hoping or fearing. But rocks don't feel fear or sadness either, and neither do cattle. Yet no one would call them happy, because they can't understand what happiness is. You can put certain people in the same category as cattle. These are people whose dull minds and lack of self-knowledge drag them down to the level of animals. There's no real difference between them and beasts. Animals have no reason at all. These people have reason, but it's twisted and corrupted — clever only in ways that hurt them.

On the Happy Life, Section 5 17 of 101
Knowing Yourself Human Nature
Seneca — The Senator Original

Since I have begun to make my definitions without a too strict adherence to the letter, a man may be called "happy" who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear: but rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, nor do cattle, yet no one would call those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is. With them you may class men whose dull nature and want of self-knowledge reduces them to the level of cattle, mere animals: there is no difference between the one and the other, because the latter have no reason, while the former have only a corrupted form of it, crooked and cunning to their own hurt.

On the Happy Life, Section 5 17 of 101
Seneca — The Senator

So we must break free from pleasure and pain. Only one thing can give us this freedom: not caring what fortune brings us. Once we reach that point, amazing things start to happen. Our mind finds peace in a safe harbor. We think big thoughts. We feel steady joy as we let go of our mistakes and learn what's true. We become kind and cheerful. We enjoy all of these things — not because they are good in themselves, but because they flow naturally from what makes humans truly good.

On the Happy Life, Section 4 16 of 101
Freedom & Control Calm Your Mind
Seneca — The Senator Original

We must, therefore, escape from them into freedom. This nothing will bestow upon us save contempt of Fortune: but if we attain to this, then there will dawn upon us those invaluable blessings, the repose of a mind that is at rest in a safe haven, its lofty imaginings, its great and steady delight at casting out errors and learning to know the truth, its courtesy, and its cheerfulness, in all of which we shall take delight, not regarding them as good things, but as proceeding from the proper good of man.

On the Happy Life, Section 4 16 of 101
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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