Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.
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Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: " Is this the condition that I feared?"
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Human society is like an arch, kept from falling by the mutual pressure of its parts
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A dwarf can stand on a mountain, he's no taller.
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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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What should a wise person do when given a blow? Same as Cato when he was attacked; not fire up or revenge the insult., or even return the blow, but simply ignore it.
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Delay not; swift the flight of fortune's greatest favours.
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Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.
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He who blushes at riding in a rattletrap, will boast when he rides in style.
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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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There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.
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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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Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it.
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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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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.
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A great, a good, and a right mind is a kind of divinity lodged in flesh, and may be the blessing of a slave as well as of a prince: it came from heaven, and to heaven it must return; and it is a kind of heavenly felicity, which a pure and virtuous mind enjoys, in some degree, even upon earth.
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Live among others as if God beheld you; speak to God as if others were listening.
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It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman.
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Fear drives the wretched to prayer
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To err is human. To repeat error is of the Devil.
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It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.
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A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing.
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Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation.
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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.