Seneca the Younger Quotes
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The voice of flattery affects us after it has ceased, just as after a concert men find some agreeable air ringing in their ears to the exclusion of all serious business.
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No work is of such merit as to instruct from a mere cursory perusal.
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It is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that there should be someone who is unconquered, someone against whom fortune has no power.
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You must know for which harbor you are headed, if you are to catch the right wind to take you there.
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Whatsoever has exceeded its proper limit is in an unstable position.
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Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?
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What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper.
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Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.
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He who comes to a conclusion when the other side is unheard, may have been just in his conclusion, but yet has not been just in his conduct.
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You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.
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The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.
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Live for thy neighbor if thou wouldst live for thyself.
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The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.
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We gain so much by quickness, and lose so much by slowness.
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We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.
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Tis not the belly's hunger that costs so much, but its pride
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The great thing is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet.
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Drunkenness doesn't create vices, but it brings them to the fore.
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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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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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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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The Fates guide those who go willingly. Those who do not, they drag.
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Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.