Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.
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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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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
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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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Dissembling profiteth nothing; a feigned countenance, and slightly forged externally, deceiveth but very few.
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He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.
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No work is of such merit as to instruct from a mere cursory perusal.
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There is more heroism in self-denial than in deeds of arms.
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The wise man will always reflect concerning the quality not the quantity of life.
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You must know for which harbor you are headed, if you are to catch the right wind to take you there.
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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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He, who holds out but a doubtful hope of succour to the afflicted, denies it.
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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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It is a common thing to screw up justice to the pitch of an injury. A man may be over-righteous, and why not over-grateful, too? There is a mischievous excess that borders so close upon ingratitude that it is no easy matter to distinguish the one from the other; but, in regard that there is good-will in the bottom of it, however distempered; for it is effectually but kindness out of the wits.
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Who has more leisure than a worm?
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Whatever is to make us better and happy God has placed either openly before us or close to us.
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Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.
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Hesitation is the best cure for anger. The first blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits, it will think again.
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Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. . . . . . No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.
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Those vices luxury and neglect of decent manners are vices of men, not of the times.
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When God has once begun to throw down the prosperous, He overthrows them altogether: such is the end of the mighty.
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To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.
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The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable.
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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.