Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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Something that can never be learnt too thoroughly can never be said too often.
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It is only the surprise and newness of the thing which makes that misfortune terrible which by premeditation might be made easy to us. For that which some people make light by sufferance, others do by foresight.
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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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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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Lightning will wreck its displeasures not only upon pillars, trees, and sheep, but upon altars and temples, and let the sacrilegious go free.
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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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Fear drives the wretched to prayer
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Not to feel one's misfortunes is not human, not to bear them is not manly.
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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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Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
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He who blushes at riding in a rattletrap, will boast when he rides in style.
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The young man must store up, the old man must use.
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The customs of that most criminal nation (Israel) have gained such strength that they have now been received in all lands. The conquered have given laws to the conquerors.
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It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman.
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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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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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Apples taste sweetest when they're going.
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How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well.
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Live among others as if God beheld you; speak to God as if others were listening.
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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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A benefit is estimated according to the mind of the giver.
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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.