Letters 99.17

In this matter, as in others also, we are obsessed by this fault—conforming to the pattern of the many, and regarding convention rather than duty. We abandon nature and surrender to the mob—who are never good advisers in anything, and in this respect as in all others are most inconsistent. People see a man who bears his grief bravely: they call him undutiful and savage-hearted; they see a man who collapses and clings to his dead: they call him womanish and weak.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 99.17, translated by Richard Mott Gummere