Seneca the Younger Quotes
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The proper amount of wealth is that which neither descends to poverty nor is far distant from it.
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We gain so much by quickness, and lose so much by slowness.
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I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man's portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.
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An old man at school is a contemptible and ridiculous object.
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On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
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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 gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late.
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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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The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
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All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.
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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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Whom they have injured they also hate.
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Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
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He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.
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It is medicine, not scenery, for which a sick man must go searching.
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Live for thy neighbor if thou wouldst live for thyself.
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The rust of the mind is the destruction of genius.
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Fear drives the wretched to prayer
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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.
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Those who pass their lives in foreign travel find they contract many ties of hospitality, but form no friendships.
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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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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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It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.
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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.