Seneca the Younger Quotes
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I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling
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A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.
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If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
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Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.
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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.
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This life is only a prelude to eternity.
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The rust of the mind is the destruction of genius.
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To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.
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Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received.
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I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man's portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.
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He, who holds out but a doubtful hope of succour to the afflicted, denies it.
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You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.
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No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own.
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To the believers it is true. To the wise it is false. To the leaders it is useful.
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Without an adversary prowess shrivels. We see how great and efficient it really is only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of.
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A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.
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Happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to the land.
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There is as much greatness of mind in the owning of a good turn as in the doing of it; and we must no more force a requital out of season than be wanting in it.
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Whom they have injured they also hate.
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The highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom - that deed and word should be in accord.
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When one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation.
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To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand
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He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.
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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.