Seneca the Younger Quotes
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If you live according to nature, you never will be poor; if according to the world's caprice, you will never be rich.
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Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.
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We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. We must learn to control and focus the force of our imagination on the good, bright side so it is positive and constructive helping ourselves and others, rather than let its force focus on the bad, dark side so it is negative and destructive hurting ourselves and others!
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Let ease and rest at times be given to the weary.
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There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
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He that makes himself famous by his eloquence, justice or arms illustrates his extraction, let it be never so mean; and gives inestimable reputation to his parents. We should never have heard of Sophroniscus, but for his son, Socrates; nor of Ariosto and Gryllus, if it had not been for Xenophon and Plato.
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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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No wind blows in favor of a ship without direction.
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It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and - even more surprising - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
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An unpopular rule is never long maintained.
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No action will be considered blameless, unless the will was so, for by the will the act was dictated.
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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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Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers; knowing that gold and silver were originally mingled with dirt, until avarice or ambition parted them.
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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.
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The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience, the next for health of mind, and then of body.
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Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.
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He, who holds out but a doubtful hope of succour to the afflicted, denies it.
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Drunkenness is nothing but a self-induced state of insanity.
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It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.
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Truth will never be tedious unto him that travelleth in the secrets of nature; there is nothing but falsehood that glutteth us.
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The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.
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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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What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.