Seneca the Younger quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

  • True happiness is...to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

  • War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.

  • Abstinence is easier than temperance.

  • Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.

  • There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

  • Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

  • The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.

  • Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.

  • Remember that pain has this most excellent quality. If prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.

  • Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

  • Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

  • Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.

  • Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is to be expecting evil before it comes.

  • The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. It is more powerful than external circumstances.

  • Calamity is virtue's opportunity.

  • A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.

  • What should a wise person do when given a blow? Same as Cato when he was attacked; not fire up or revenge the insult., or even return the blow, but simply ignore it.

  • There are more people abusive to others than lie open to abuse themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow.

  • For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

  • It's the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.

  • It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.

  • He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.

  • The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

  • Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.

  • Don't stumble over something behind you.

  • Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.

  • Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

  • A benefit is estimated according to the mind of the giver.

  • This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time.

  • The wise man will not pardon any crime that ought to be punished, but he will accomplish, in a nobler way, all that is sought in pardoning. He will spare some and watch over some, because of their youth, and others on account of their ignorance. His clemency will not fall short of justice, but will fulfill it perfectly.

  • This is the difference between us Romans and the Etruscans: We believe that lightning is caused by clouds colliding, whereas they believe that clouds collide in order to create lightning. Since they attribute everything to gods, they are led to believe not that events have a meaning because they have happened, but that they happen in order to express a meaning.

  • A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.

  • A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.

  • There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!

  • Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.

  • The whole discord of this world consists in discords.

  • I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling

  • As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit

  • See what daily exercise does for one.

  • It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult

  • The declaration of love may come sooner than expected. Take time before you reciprocate as this may simply be a statement of what they expect from you.

  • Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

  • To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

  • Disease is not of the body but of the place.

  • A benefit consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

  • We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

  • Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

  • Drunkenness is simply voluntary insanity.

  • When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

  • Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

  • Begin at once to live, and count each day as a separate life.

  • Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

  • Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.

  • Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

  • Epileptics know by signs when attacks are imminent and take precautions accordingly; we must do the same in regard to anger

  • Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.

  • Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

  • It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

  • Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

  • A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

  • Prosperity asks for fidelity; adversity exacts it.

  • Fidelity bought with money is overcome by money.

  • Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

  • Sadness usually results from one of the following causes either when a man does not succeed, or is ashamed of his success.

  • Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock.

  • Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

  • Those who pass their lives in foreign travel find they contract many ties of hospitality, but form no friendships.

  • He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.

  • It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

  • Every one has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody: people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness.

  • ... frugality makes a poor man rich.

  • The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed

  • It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.

  • Life's neither a good nor an evil: it's a field for good and evil.

  • Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

  • Let him that hath done the good office conceal it; let him that received it disclose it.

  • He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.

  • Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee, short thou art if I cannot bear thee!

  • Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.

  • A favor is to a grateful man delightful always; to an ungrateful man only once.

  • He who has great power should use it lightly.

  • He is not guilty who is not guilty of his own free will.

  • Every guilty person is his own hangman.

  • A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.

  • ...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.

  • One hand washes the other.

  • He that by harshness of nature rules his family with an iron hand is as truly a tyrant as he who misgoverns a nation.

  • Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.

  • Fortune's not content with knocking a man down; she sends him spinning head over heels, crash upon crash.

  • On entering a temple we assume all signs of reverence. How much more reverent then should we be before the heavenly bodies, the stars, the very nature of God!

  • It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

  • What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.

  • The best way to do good to ourselves is to do it to others; the right way to gather is to scatter.

  • We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

  • To lose a friend is the greatest of all evils, but endeavour rather to rejoice that you possessed him than to mourn his loss.

  • Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.

  • He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

  • Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

  • Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

  • We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

  • He is ungrateful who denies that he has received a kindness which has been bestowed upon him; he is ungrateful who conceals it; he is ungrateful who makes no return for it; most ungrateful of all is he who forgets it.

  • Greed's worst point is its ingratitude.

  • Injustice never rules forever.

  • Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

  • It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.

  • I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

  • He is a king who fears nothing, he is a king who desires nothing!

  • It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

  • We sought therefore to amend our will, and not to suffer it through despite to languish long time in error.

  • Ignorance is the cause of fear.

  • The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late.

  • No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

  • Life's like a play; it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

  • Levity of behavior is the bane of all that is good and virtuous.

  • What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.

  • You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

  • Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

  • Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.

  • Who-only let him be a man and intent upon honor-is not eager for the honorable ordeal and prompt to assume perilous duties? To what energetic man is not idleness a punishment?

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share