Seneca the Younger Quotes
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The sun shines even on the wicked.
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As gratitude is a necessary, and a glorious virtue, so also it is an obvious, a cheap, and an easy one; so obvious that wherever there is life there is a place for it; so cheap, that the covetous man may be gratified without expense, and so easy that the sluggard may be so likewise without labor.
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Who has more leisure than a worm?
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The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
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The origin of all mankind was the same; it is only a clear and good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself.
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There is more heroism in self-denial than in deeds of arms.
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A benefit is estimated according to the mind of the giver.
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He who blushes at riding in a rattletrap, will boast when he rides in style.
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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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All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain.
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When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that 'he hadn't come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.' Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: 'It's not my intention to accept whatever time is leftover from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.' Give your whole mind to her.
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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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We sought therefore to amend our will, and not to suffer it through despite to languish long time in error.
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The acquisition of riches has been to many not an end to their miseries, but a change in them: The fault is not in the riches, but the disposition.
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Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.
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Injustice never rules forever.
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I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
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Greed's worst point is its ingratitude.
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It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.
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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
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As long as we are among humans, let us be humane.
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Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after rest. Just as you must not force fertile farmland, as uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigour, while a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers. Unremitting effort leads to a kind of mental dullness and lethargy.
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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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Truth will never be tedious unto him that travelleth in the secrets of nature; there is nothing but falsehood that glutteth us.