Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Delay not; swift the flight of fortune's greatest favours.
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A man can refrain from wanting what he has not and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand.
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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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After death there is nothing.
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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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Lightning will wreck its displeasures not only upon pillars, trees, and sheep, but upon altars and temples, and let the sacrilegious go free.
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The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution.
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Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws.
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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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Extreme remedies are never the first to be resorted to.
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As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it. The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in a man's life, and I maintain that, even when they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still.
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Fear drives the wretched to prayer
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Live for thy neighbor if thou wouldst live for thyself.
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It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.
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To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.
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Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
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We sought therefore to amend our will, and not to suffer it through despite to languish long time in error.
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Revenge is an inhuman word.
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Whatever is to make us better and happy God has placed either openly before us or close to us.
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Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find.
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He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.
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The wise man lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.
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The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
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It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.