Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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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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Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.
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Live among others as if God beheld you; speak to God as if others were listening.
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Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?
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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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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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Nobody will keep the thing he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more.
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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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Whatsoever has exceeded its proper limit is in an unstable position.
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Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.
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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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The acquisition of riches has been to many not an end to their miseries, but a change in them: The fault is not in the riches, but the disposition.
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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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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
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The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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The young man must store up, the old man must use.
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Solitude and company may be allowed to take their turns: the one creates in us the love of mankind, the other that of ourselves; solitude relieves us when we are sick of company, and conversation when we are weary of being alone, so that the one cures the other. There is no man so miserable as he that is at a loss how to use his time
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Let ease and rest at times be given to the weary.
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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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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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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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Drunkenness doesn't create vices, but it brings them to the fore.
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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.