I make use of this privilege, and daily plead my cause before myself: when the lamp is taken out of my sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have said and done.
What it means
Every night, once the house was quiet, Seneca went back over his whole day, everything he had said and done, and judged it as if he were both the defendant and the judge. “Plead my cause before myself” means holding a small trial of his own conduct.
It was a habit, and his wife knew it: she stopped talking when the lamp went out because she knew he was about to begin.
The context
The passage comes from the third book of Seneca’s essay On Anger, where he discusses how to keep anger in check. He borrows the practice from the philosopher Sextius, who would ask himself at the end of each day: “What bad habit of yours have you cured to-day? what vice have you checked? in what respect are you better?” Anger, Seneca says, “will cease, and become more gentle, if it knows that every day it will have to appear before the judgment seat.”
He then gives examples from his own review, forgiving himself while setting a rule for next time: “In that dispute you spoke too contentiously: do not for the future argue with ignorant people.” And he asks, “how sweet is the sleep which follows this self-examination?”
Why it matters
Most of us go to sleep replaying the day anyway, often as worry or regret. Seneca turns that into a deliberate habit with a purpose: see clearly what went wrong, pardon it, and decide what to do differently. It’s the same daily check Benjamin Franklin later kept in his little book.
The tone matters as much as the habit. He isn’t punishing himself. “I pardon you this time,” he says, “see that you never do that any more.” A review that ends in self-reproach is hard to keep up; one that ends in a plan for tomorrow is a habit that improves the others.
About Seneca
Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist, c. 4 BC–AD 65
Seneca, known as Seneca the Younger, was born around 4 BC in Córdoba, in the Roman province of Hispania. He was a Stoic philosopher, a statesman and a dramatist. In AD 41 the emperor Claudius exiled him to Corsica; he was allowed to return in 49 and became tutor to the young Nero.
In his last few years, withdrawn from court and seldom in Rome, he wrote the Moral Letters to Lucilius, 124 letters on how to live, addressed to his friend Lucilius. In 65 he was forced to take his own life over his alleged part in the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero; whether he was involved is still debated.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from On Anger, Book III, 36 (translated by Aubrey Stewart, 1889), before AD 65.
The full passage:
I make use of this privilege, and daily plead my cause before myself: when the lamp is taken out of my sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have said and done: I conceal nothing from myself, and omit nothing.
We matched the quote word for word against the Project Gutenberg text of Aubrey Stewart's 1889 translation, in the third book of On Anger, section 36. The sentence continues after "said and done" (see the full passage below), so the quote ends there with a full stop. Seneca wrote in Latin, and other translations word it differently. We last checked this on 1 November 2026.