Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Whatsoever has exceeded its proper limit is in an unstable position.
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We gain so much by quickness, and lose so much by slowness.
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The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.
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If you don't know, ask. You will be a fool for the moment, but a wise man for the rest of your life.
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Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.
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The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.
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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 whom fortune has never favored are more joyful than those whom she has deserted.
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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
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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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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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Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance.
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Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.
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Nullum ad nocendum tempus angustum est malis. No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors.
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The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.
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The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed.
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It is medicine, not scenery, for which a sick man must go searching.
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Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.
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Tis not the belly's hunger that costs so much, but its pride
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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.
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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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To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.
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A man's ability cannot possibly be of one sort and his soul of another. If his soul be well-ordered, serious and restrained, his ability also is sound and sober. Conversely, when the one degenerates, the other is contaminated.