Seneca the Younger Quotes
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It is medicine, not scenery, for which a sick man must go searching.
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What narrow innocence it is for one to be good only according to the law.
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He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.
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No one can be despised by another until he has learned to despise himself.
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The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past.
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To the stars through difficulties.
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Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers; knowing that gold and silver were originally mingled with dirt, until avarice or ambition parted them.
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Who needs forgiveness, should the same extend with readiness.
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I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.
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Such is the blindness, nay the insanity of mankind, that some men are driven to death by the fear of it.
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If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.
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He who forbids not sin when he may, commands it
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A man's ability cannot possibly be of one sort and his soul of another. If his soul be well-ordered, serious and restrained, his ability also is sound and sober. Conversely, when the one degenerates, the other is contaminated.
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If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
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What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.
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To make a commencement requires a mental effort.
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He that lays down precepts for the governing of our lives, and moderating our passions, obliges humanity not only in the present, but in all future generations.
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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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Apples taste sweetest when they're going.
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Do not grudge your brother his rest. He has at last become free, safe and immortal, and ranges joyous through the boundless heavens; he has left this low-lying region and has soared upwards to that place which receives in its happy bosom the souls set free from the chains of matter. Your brother has not lost the light of day, but has obtained a more enduring light. He has not left us, but has gone on before.
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If wisdom were offered me with the proviso that I should keep it shut up and refrain from declaring it, I should refuse. There's no delight in owning anything unshared.
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I had rather never receive a kindness than never bestow one.
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We learn not for life but for the debating-room.
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When modesty has once perished, it will never revive.