Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
No work is of such merit as to instruct from a mere cursory perusal.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Whatever we owe, it is our part to find where to pay it, and to do it without asking, too; for whether the creditor be good or bad, the debt is still the same.
-
The young man must store up, the old man must use.
-
Where reason fails, time oft has worked a cure.
-
Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.
-
The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company
-
It is medicine, not scenery, for which a sick man must go searching.
-
Never to wrong others takes one a long way towards peace of mind.
-
The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
-
Those who pass their lives in foreign travel find they contract many ties of hospitality, but form no friendships.
-
You must know for which harbor you are headed, if you are to catch the right wind to take you there.
-
The best way to do good to ourselves is to do it to others; the right way to gather is to scatter.
-
The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.
-
Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.
-
Pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most.
-
Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws.
-
Extreme remedies are never the first to be resorted to.
-
Humanity is fortunate, because no man is unhappy except by his own fault.
-
When God has once begun to throw down the prosperous, He overthrows them altogether: such is the end of the mighty.
-
There is nothing that Nature has made necessary which is more easy than death; we are longer a-coming into the world than going out of it; and there is not any minute of our lives wherein we may not reasonably expect it. Nay, it is but a momen'ts work, the parting of soul and body. What a shame is it then to stand in fear of anything so long that is over so soon!
-
So enjoy the pleasures of the hour as not to spoil those that are to follow.
-
He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.