# Seneca, ‘Letter 84. On gathering ideas’, trans. Gummere, 1920 > [!cite] > Seneca. ‘Letter 84. On gathering ideas’. *Seneca. ‘Seneca. Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. With an English translation by Richard M. Gummere*. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. William Heinemann and G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920; Wikisource, updated 4 February 2025. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_84. --- ## quotes ‘We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says, *pack close the flowing honey,* *And swell their cells with nectar sweet.* [[Seneca, ‘Letter 84. On gathering ideas’, trans. Gummere, 1920|(Seneca, trans. Gummere 1920, Letter 84)]] ^93decb ‘\[…] We also, I say, ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate; then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us,—in other words, our natural gifts,—we should so blend those several flavours into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from that whence it came.’[[Seneca, ‘Letter 84. On gathering ideas’, trans. Gummere, 1920|(Seneca, trans. Gummere 1920, Letter 84)]]] ^649029