"Many words have been spoken by Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus, Posidonius, and by a whole host of equally excellent Stoics. I'll tell you how people can prove their words to be their own-by putting into practice what they've been preaching."-SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 108.35; 38
("플라톤, 제논, 크리시푸스, 포시도니우스 그리고 그에 못지않게 훌륭한 스토아 학파의 수많은 철학자들이 많은 말을 남겼습니다. 그들이 자신의 말이 진정한 것임을 증명할 수 있는 방법은 바로 자신이 설파한 것을 실천에 옮기는 것입니다." - 세네카, 도덕적 서신, 108.35; 38)
One of the criticisms of Stoicism by modern translators and teachers is the amount of repetition. Marcus Aurelius, for example, has been dismissed by academics as not being original because his writing resembles that of other, earlier Stoics. This criticism misses the point.
Even before Marcus's time, Seneca was well aware that there was a lot of borrowing and overlap among the philosophers. That's because real philosophers weren't concerned with authorship, only what worked. More important, they believed that what was said mattered less than what was done.
And this is as true now as it was then. You're welcome to take all of the words of the great philosophers and use them to your own liking (they're dead; they don't mind). Feel free to tweak and edit and improve as you like....
