Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Abstinence is easier than temperance.
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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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Men practice war; beasts do not.
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In whatever direction you turn, you will see God coming to meet you; nothing is void of him, he himself fills all his work.
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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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Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.
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What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.
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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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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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Not to feel one's misfortunes is not human, not to bear them is not manly.
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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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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 nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
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An unpopular rule is never long maintained.
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Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.
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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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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 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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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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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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He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.
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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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Poverty with joy isn't poverty at all. The poor man is not one who has little, but one who hankers after more.
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It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.