Reading room

The passages that matter

2,300 years of clear minds, in their own words. Public-domain passages, nothing added.

Letter on Happiness
Epicurus, ~300 BC

From a Private Notebook
Marcus Aurelius, ~170 AD

On the Shortness of Life
Seneca, ~49 AD

On the Nature of Things
Lucretius, ~55 BC

Zarathustra's Prologue
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883

The Handbook
Epictetus, ~125 AD

A Creed for This World
Robert Ingersoll, 1882

Quatrains
Omar Khayyām, ~1120