Q0031

Seneca

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

If you wish to be loved, love.
Thinker Seneca
School Stoicism
Source Letters to Lucilius, Ep. 9.6 (quoting Hecato)
Theme Love
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Letters to Lucilius, Ep. 9.6 (quoting Hecato), within the tradition of Stoicism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of love, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Seneca's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Seneca. (n.d.). If you wish to be loved, love. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0031

MLA: Seneca. “If you wish to be loved, love..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0031.

Chicago: Seneca. “If you wish to be loved, love..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0031.

Same thinker

More from Seneca

  1. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  2. Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
  3. There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
  4. All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
  5. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

All quotations by Seneca

Same theme

More on love

  1. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  2. A friend is another self.
  3. Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
  4. Compassion is the basis of morality.
  5. Mencius said: Those who love others are constantly loved by others; those who respect others are constantly respected by others.

Browse the love theme